under the same government, but the South regarded this as implying no
tie more intimate than that which brought the representatives of
Prussia and Austria together in the Frankfort Diet. We have the same
right to impose terms and to demand guaranties that Prussia has, that
the victor always has.

Many people are led to favor Mr. Johnson's policy because they dislike
those whom they please to call the "Republican leaders." If ever a
party existed that had no recognized leaders, it is the Republican
party. Composed for the last five years, at least, of men who,
themselves professing all shades of opinion, were agreed only in a
determination to sustain the honor and preserve the existence of the
nation, it has been rather a majority than a party, employing the
legislative machine to carry out the purposes of public opinion. The
people were the true inspirers of all its measures, and accordingly it
was left without a definite policy the moment the mere politicians in
its ranks became doubtful as to what direction the popular mind would
take. It had no recognized leader either in the House or Senate just at
the time when it first stood in need of such. The majority of its
representatives there tried in vain to cast any political horoscope by
which it would be safe for them individually to be guided. They showed
the same distrust of the sound judgment of the people and their power
to grasp principles that they showed at the beginning of the war, and
at every discouraging moment while it was going on. Now that the signs
of the times show unmistakably to what the popular mind is making
itself up, they have once more a policy, if we may call that so which
is only a calculation of what it would be "safe to go before the people
with," as they call it. It is always safe to go before them with plain
principles of right, and with the conclusions that must be drawn from
them by common sense, though this is what too many of our public men
can never understand. Now joining a Know-Nothing "lodge," now hanging
on the outskirts of a Fenian "circle," they mistake the momentary
eddies of popular whimsy for the great current that sets always
strongly in one direction through the life and history of the nation.
Is it, as foreigners assert, the fatal defect of our system to fill our
highest offices with men whose views in politics are bounded by the
next district election? When we consider how noble the science
is,--nobler even than astronomy,