t allies in the Free
States, their conventions transacted all important business in secret
session;--there was but one exception to the shrinking delicacy
becoming a maiden government, and that was the openness of the
stealing. We had always thought a high sense of personal honor an
essential element of chivalry; but among the _Romanic_ races, by which,
as the wonderful ethnologist of _De Bow's Review_ tells us, the
Southern States where settled, and from which they derive a close
entail of chivalric characteristics, to the exclusion of the vulgar
Saxons of the North, such is by no means the case. For the first time
in history the deliberate treachery of a general is deemed worthy of a
civic ovation, and Virginia has the honor of being the first State
claiming to be civilized that has decreed the honors of a triumph to a
cabinet officer who had contrived to gild a treason that did not
endanger his life with a peculation that could not further damage his
reputation. Rebellion, even in a bad cause, may have its romantic side;
treason, which had not been such but for being on the losing side, may
challenge admiration; but nothing can sweeten larceny or disinfect
perjury. A rebellion inaugurated with theft, and which has effected its
entry into national fortresses, not over broken walls, but by breaches
of trust, should take Jonathan Wild for its patron saint, with the run
of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet for a choice of sponsors,--godfathers we
should not dare to call them.

Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Speech was of the kind usually called "firm,
but conciliatory,"--a policy doubtful in troublous times, since it
commonly argues weakness, and more than doubtful in a crisis like ours,
since it left the course which the Administration meant to take
ambiguous, and, while it weakened the Government by exciting the
distrust of all who wished for vigorous measures, really strengthened
the enemy by encouraging the conspirators in the Border States. There
might be a question as to whether this or that attitude were expedient
for the Republican party; there could be none as to the only safe and
dignified one for the Government of the Nation. Treason was as much
treason in the beginning of March as in the middle of April; and it
seems certain now, as it seemed probable to many then, that the country
would have sooner rallied to the support of the Government, if the
Government had shown an earlier confidence in the loyalty of the
people. Though