intelligence of those States, but has no relevancy
if made to the general government. It is not with these States that we
are making terms or claim any right to make them, nor is the number of
their non-voting population so large as to make them dangerous, or the
prejudice against them so great that it may not safely be left to time
and common sense. It was not till all men were made equal before the
law, and the fact recognized that government is something that does not
merely preside over, but reside in, the rights of all, that even white
peasants were enabled to rise out of their degradation, and to become
the strength instead of the danger of France. Nothing short of such a
reform could have conquered the contempt and aversion with which the
higher classes looked upon the emancipated serf. Norman-French
literature reeks with the outbreak of this feeling toward the
ancestors, whether Jews or villeins, of the very men who are now the
aristocracy of South Carolina,--a feeling as intense, as nauseous in
its expression, and as utterly groundless, as that against the negro
now. We are apt, it would seem, a little to confound the meaning of the
two terms _government_ and _self-government_, and the principles on
which they respectively rest. If the latter has its rights, the former
has quite as plainly its duties; and one of them certainly is to see
that no freedom should be allowed to the parts which would endanger the
safety of the whole. An occasion calling for the exercise of this duty
is forced upon us now, and we must be equal to it. Self-government, in
any rightful definition of it, can hardly be stretched so far that it
will cover, as the late Rebels and their Northern advocates contend,
the right to dispose absolutely of the destinies of four millions of
people, the allies and hearty friends of the United States, without
allowing them any voice in the matter.

[Illustration: _William H. Seward_]

It is alleged by reckless party orators that those who ask for
guaranties before readmitting the seceded States wish to treat them
with harshness, if not with cruelty. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens is
triumphantly quoted, as if his foolish violence fairly represented the
political opinions of the Union party. They might as well be made
responsible for his notions of finance. We are quite willing to let Mr.
Stevens be paired off with Mr. Vallandigham, and to believe that
neither is a fair exponent of the average sentiment of his pa