and superseding party-leaders, the peddlers of chicane, with men
adequate to great occasions and dealers in destiny. Such a crisis is
now upon us; and if the virtue of the people make up for the imbecility
of the Executive, as we have little doubt that it will, if the public
spirit of the whole country be awakened in time by the common peril,
the present trial will leave the nation stronger than ever, and more
alive to its privileges and the duties they imply. We shall have
learned what is meant by a government of laws, and that allegiance to
the sober will of the majority, concentrated in established forms and
distributed by legitimate channels, is all that renders democracy
possible, is its only conservative principle, the only thing that has
made and can keep us a powerful nation instead of a brawling mob.

The theory that the best government is that which governs least seems
to have been accepted literally by Mr. Buchanan, without considering
the qualifications to which all general propositions are subject. His
course of conduct has shown up its absurdity, in cases where prompt
action is required, as effectually as Buckingham turned into ridicule
the famous verse,--

"My wound is great, because it is so small,"

by instantly adding,--

"Then it were greater, were it none at all."

Mr. Buchanan seems to have thought, that, if to govern little was to
govern well, then to do nothing was the perfection of policy. But there
is a vast difference between letting well alone and allowing bad to
become worse by a want of firmness at the outset. If Mr. Buchanan,
instead of admitting the right of secession, had declared it to be, as
it plainly is, rebellion, he would not only have received the unanimous
support of the Free States, but would have given confidence to the
loyal, reclaimed the wavering, and disconcerted the plotters of treason
in the South.

Either we have no government at all, or else the very word implies the
right, and therefore the duty, in the governing power, of protecting
itself from destruction and its property from pillage. But for Mr.
Buchanan's acquiescence, the doctrine of the right of secession would
never for a moment have bewildered the popular mind. It is simply
mob-law under a plausible name. Such a claim might have been fairly
enough urged under the old Confederation; though even then it would
have been summarily dealt with, in the case of a Tory colony, if the
necessity had arise