Mr. Fillmore, to whom the Fugitive Slave Law denies the complete
boon of an otherwise justly earned oblivion, had some dignity given to
his administration by the presence of Everett. But in this late
advertising-tour of a policy in want of a party, Cleon and Agoracritus
seem to have joined partnership, and the manners of the man match those
of the master. Mr. Johnson cannot so much as hope for the success in
escaping memory achieved by the last of those small Virginians whom the
traditionary fame of a State once fertile in statesmen lifted to four
years of imperial pillory, where his own littleness seemed to heighten
rather than lower the grandeur of his station; his name will not be
associated with the accomplishment of a great wrong against humanity,
let us hope not with the futile attempt at one; but he will be
indignantly remembered as the first, and we trust the last, of our
chief magistrates who believed in the brutality of the people, and gave
to the White House the ill-savor of a corner-grocery. _He_ a tribune of
the people? A lord of misrule, an abbot of unreason, much rather!

No one can object more strongly than we to the mixing of politics with
personal character; but they are here inextricably entangled together,
and we hold it to be the duty of every journal in the country to join
in condemning a spectacle which silence might seem to justify as a
common event in our politics. We turn gladly from the vulgarity of the
President and his minister to consider the force of their arguments.
Mr. Johnson seems to claim that he has not betrayed the trust to which
he was elected, mainly because the Union party have always affirmed
that the rebellious States could not secede, and therefore _ex vi
termini_ are still in the Union. The corollary drawn from this is,
that they have therefore a manifest right to immediate representation
in Congress. What we have always understood the Union party as meaning
to affirm was, that a State had no right to secede; and it was upon
that question, which is a very different thing from the other, that the
whole controversy hinged. To assert that a State or States could not
secede, if they were strong enough, would be an absurdity. In point of
fact, all but three of the Slave States did secede, and for four years
it would have been treason throughout their whole territory, and death
on the nearest tree, to assert the contrary. The law forbids a man to
steal, but he may steal, nevertheles