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vitals, there might be found, in that state of things, some reason for avoiding occasions of bitter social agitation, such as calling hard names, putting the ban on social intercourse, etc.; but that one portion of the community entertaining very decided opinions as to the incapacity of the officials agents of Government, and the baleful tendency of both their principles and their practice, should sit quietly down and let the car of Juggernaut roll over and grind its thousands, is like expecting the paterfamilias to be easy and content, whilst the robber and murderer are in the house, ready for their deeds of blood. No matter though he should be mistaken, and those in the semblance of robbers should prove to be angels in dis guise, yet, believing as he did, would he be guilty of the blood of his children, if he hesitated to call the watch, and himself to resist, meanwhile, as he could.
The text of the article is, that there must be no change of the Republican for a Democratic administration, nor even of the present members of the Cabinet. This text is not, indeed, formally announced at the beginning, as in a sermon, but immediately follows the prefatory remarks on the state of war. Arguments both precede and follow the text. The 'spirit of patriotism' is the initiative and the potent spell which solves the riddle of the hour. This is not an expository discourse, and therefore terms are left undefined, and the reader may easily imagine patriotism to be, not love of country, but sustentation of a policy adopted by the President and his Cabinet. This spirit of patriotism, a substitute for love of country, very readily settles the whole difficulty, and makes the Presidential election the most facile thing possible. But if A and B differ in their views of what constitutes love of country, how is the difficulty met? If, although A think the theories and practice of the administration the very essence of patriotism, B entertains a totally variant opinion, what then? Suppose B to hold it among his deep convictions, that consolidation, centralization, annihilation of State Rights and Federal union, do not represent the ideas of his country, derived from the action of the Fathers, and that the tendency of measures of administration is strongly in that direction, whilst A's patriotism consists in adopting into his axioms those very ideas and giving his whole soul to those measures, must not the 'spirit of patriotism' in the one dictate a course opposite to that of the other? How, then, is it to solve all the difficulty of a 'Presidential election?'
The position, therefore, is not accepted by us, that patriotism demands the support of the administration, nor, consequently, that he cannot be a very good patriot who does not. The term government is uniformly employed by such writers as the author of this article, as the synonym of administration; and hence, not to approve the latter is not to 'uphold the arm of the Government.'
Mr. Webster, as well as Mr. Seward, both recognize and make a clear distinction. In measures of policy, even in a civil war, it is entirely competent for us to dissent decidedly from those of the President, and yet uphold the Government proper. In so far as it is clear that the policy is simply that which is essential to the maintenance of the Constitution and the Federal Union, so far are we bound to sustain it, for to both these are we pledged by compact, and they are our life. This, too, is loyalty, in the only proper sense of the word, fealty to law or Constitution.
But if a policy is adopted, in carrying on the war, totally adverse to the Federative bond, and subversive of all real union, then no more is it either loyalty or patriotism to abet it, but rather to endeavor to avert it.
It is not, then, so palpable, that the only policy of voters at the coming Presidential election, which will sustain the arm of Government, and be patri-