ustice and validity of their emancipation. But the situation of the
negro is strikingly parallel with that of the new holders of land in
France. As they were entitled to security, so he has a right not only
to be secured in his freedom, but in the consequences which
legitimately flow from it. For it is only so that he can be insured
against that feeling of distrust and uncertainty of the future which
will prevent him from being profitable to himself, his former master,
and the country. If we sought a parallel for Mr. Johnson's "policy," we
should find it in James II., thinking his prerogative strong enough to
overcome the instincts, convictions, and fears of England.

However much fair-minded men may have been wearied with the backing and
filling of Congress, and their uncertainty of action on some of the
most important questions that have come before them,--however the
dignity, and even propriety, of their attitude toward Mr. Johnson may
be in some respects honestly called in question,--no one who has looked
fairly at the matter can pronounce the terms they have imposed on the
South as conditions of restoration harsh ones. The character of
Congress is not before the country, but simply the character of the
plan they propose. For ourselves, we should frankly express our disgust
at the demagogism which courted the Fenians; for, however much we may
sympathize with the real wrongs of Ireland, it was not for an American
Congress to declare itself in favor of a movement which based itself on
the claim of every Irish voter in the country to a double citizenship,
in which the adopted country was made secondary, and which, directed as
it was against a province where Irishmen are put on equal terms with
every other inhabitant, and where their own Church is the privileged
one, was nothing better than burglary and murder. Whatever may be Mr.
Seward's faults, he was certainly right in his dealing with that
matter, unless he is to be blamed for slowness. But as regards the
terms offered by Congress to the South, they are very far from harsh or
unreasonable; they are lamb-like compared to what we had reason to fear
from Mr. Johnson, if we might judge by his speeches and declarations of
a year or two ago. But for the unhappy hallucination which led Mr.
Johnson first to fancy himself the people of the United States, and
then to quarrel with the party which elected him for not granting that
he was so, they would not have found a man in t