oves
its resources less, to suggest a number of plans, than to devise and
carry through a single one.

Mr. Johnson has an undoubted constitutional right to choose any, or to
reject all, of the schemes of settlement proposed by Congress, though
the wisdom of his action in any case is a perfectly proper subject of
discussion among those who put him where he is, who are therefore
responsible for his power of good or evil, and to whom the consequences
of his decision must come home at last. He has an undoubted personal
right to propose any scheme of settlement himself, and to advocate it
with whatever energy of reason or argument he possesses, but is liable,
in our judgment, to very grave reprehension if he appeal to the body of
the people against those who are more immediately its representatives
than himself in any case of doubtful expediency, before discussion is
exhausted, and where the difference may well seem one of personal pique
rather than of considerate judgment. This is to degrade us from a
republic, in whose fore-ordered periodicity of submission to popular
judgment democracy has guarded itself against its own passions, to a
mass meeting, where momentary interest, panic, or persuasive
sophistry--all of them gregarious influences, and all of them
contagious--may decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find
it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in
the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to
thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the
strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects
for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide
whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call it obstinacy or
firmness. Our own judgment can draw no favorable augury from meetings
gathered "to sustain the President," as it is called, especially if we
consider the previous character of those who are prominent in them, nor
from the ill-considered gossip about a "President's party;" and they
would excite our apprehension of evil to come, did we not believe that
the experience of the last five years had settled into convictions in
the mind of the people. The practical result to which all benevolent
men finally come is that it is idle to try to sustain any man who has
not force of character enough to sustain himself without their help,
and the only party which has any chance now before the people is that
of reso