never have been convicted but for the resolution of an adversary,
who, pinning his hand to the table with a fork, said to him blandly,
"My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under your Lordship's hand, why,
then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that a timely treatment of
Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would have saved the
disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,--for disasters they were,
though six months of temporizing had so lowered the public sense of
what was due to the national dignity that people were glad to see the
Government active at length, even if only in setting fire to its own
house.

We are by no means inclined to criticise the Administration, even if
this were the proper time for it; but we cannot help thinking that
there was great wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing
with a mob,--"First fire grape-shot _into_ them; after that, over their
heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already
embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have
been a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican party.
Instead of keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at
issue, namely, the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when
displeased with the result of an election, the bare question of
Secession, pure and simple, they allowed their party to become divided,
and to waste themselves in discussing terms of compromise and
guaranties of slavery which had nothing to do with the business in
hand. Unless they were ready to admit that popular government was at an
end, those were matters already settled by the Constitution and the
last election. Compromise was out of the question with men who had gone
through the motions, at least, of establishing a government and
electing an anti-president. The way to insure the loyalty of the Border
States, as the event has shown, was to convince them that disloyalty
was dangerous. That revolutions never go backward is one of those
compact generalizations which the world is so ready to accept because
they save the trouble of thinking; but, however it may be with
revolutions, it is certain that rebellions most commonly go backward
with disastrous rapidity, and it was of the gravest moment, as
respected its moral influence, that Secession should not have time
allowed it to assume the proportions and the dignity of revolution; in
other words, of a rebellion too powerful to be crushed. The secret
friend