ntiment rather than to lead it, it seemed as if Disunion were
inevitable, and the only open question were the line of separation. So
assured seemed the event that English journalists moralized gravely on
the inherent weakness of Democracy. While the leaders of the Southern
Rebellion did not dare to expose their treason to the risk of a popular
vote in any one of the seceding States, _The Saturday Review_, one
of the ablest of British journals, solemnly warned its countrymen to
learn by our example the dangers of an extended suffrage.

Meanwhile, the conduct of the people of the Free States, during all
these trying and perilous months, had proved, if it proved anything,
the essential conservatism of a population in which every grown man
has a direct interest in the stability of the national government.
So abstinent are they by habit and principle from any abnormal
intervention with the machine of administration, so almost
superstitious in adherence to constitutional forms, as to be for a
moment staggered by the claim to a _right_ of secession set up by all
the Cotton States, admitted by the Border Slave States, which had the
effrontery to deliberate between their plain allegiance and their
supposed interest, and but feebly denied by the Administration then in
power. The usual panacea of palaver was tried; Congress did its best to
add to the general confusion of thought; and, as if that were not
enough, a Convention of Notables was called simultaneously to thresh
the straw of debate anew, and to convince thoughtful persons that men
do not grow wiser as they grow older. So in the two Congresses the
notables talked,--in the one those who ought to be shelved, in the
other those who were shelved already,--while those who were too
thoroughly shelved for a seat in either addressed Great Union Meetings
at home. Not a man of them but had a compromise in his pocket, adhesive
as Spalding's glue, warranted to stick the shattered Confederacy
together so firmly that, if it ever broke again, it must be in a new
place, which was a great consolation. If these gentlemen gave nothing
very valuable to the people of the Free States, they were giving the
Secessionists what was of inestimable value to them,--Time. The latter
went on seizing forts, navy-yards, and deposits of Federal money,
erecting batteries, and raising and arming men at their leisure; above
all, they acquired a prestige, and accustomed men's minds to the
thought of disunion,