neral Jackson,
we suspect, would have accommodated rebel commissioners in the same
peremptory style.

While our Government, like Giles in the old rhyme, is wondering whether
it is a government or not, emissaries of treason are cunningly working
upon the fears and passions of the Border States, whose true interests
are infinitely more on the side of the Union than of slavery. They are
luring the ambitious with visionary promises of Southern grandeur and
prosperity, and deceiving the ignorant into the belief that the
principles and practice of the Free States were truly represented by
John Brown. All this might have been prevented, had Mr. Buchanan in his
Message thought of the interests of his country instead of those of his
party. It is not too late to check and neutralize it now. A decisively
national and patriotic policy is all that can prevent excited men from
involving themselves so deeply that they will find "returning as
tedious as go o'er," and be more afraid of cowardice than of
consequences.

Slavery is no longer the matter in debate, and we must beware of being
led off upon that side-issue. The matter now in hand is the
reestablishment of order, the reaffirmation of national unity, and the
settling once for all whether there can be such a thing as a government
without the right to use its power in self-defence. The Republican
party has done all it could lawfully do in limiting slavery once more
to the States in which it exists, and in relieving the Free States from
forced complicity with an odious system. They can be patient, as
Providence is often patient, till natural causes work that conviction
which conscience has been unable to effect. They believe that the
violent abolition of slavery, which would be sure to follow sooner or
later the disruption of our Confederacy, would not compensate for the
evil that would be entailed upon both races by the abolition of our
nationality and the bloody confusion that would follow it. More than
this, they believe that there can be no permanent settlement except in
the definite establishment of the principle, that this Government, like
all others, rests upon the everlasting foundations of just
Authority,--that that authority, once delegated by the people, becomes
a common stock of Power to be wielded for the common protection, and
from which no minority or majority of partners can withdraw its
contribution under any conditions,--that this power is what makes us a
natio