aining a favorable verdict from the people has fostered
in our public men the talents and habits of jury-lawyers at the expense
of statesmanlike qualities; and the people have been so long wonted to
look upon the utterances of popular leaders as intended for immediate
effect and having no reference to principles, that there is scarcely a
prominent man in the country so independent in position and so clear of
any suspicion of personal or party motives that they can put entire
faith in what he says, and accept him either as the leader or the
exponent of their thoughts and wishes. They have hardly been able to
judge with certainty from the debates in Congress whether secession
were a real danger, or only one of those political feints of which they
have had such frequent experience.

Events have been gradually convincing them that the peril was actual
and near. They begin to see how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the
weak policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at Revolution till
they learn to think the coarse reality as easy and pretty as the
vaudeville they have been acting. They are fast coming to the
conclusion that the list of grievances put forward by the secessionists
is a sham and a pretence, the veil of a long-matured plot against
republican institutions. And it is time the traitors of the South
should know that the Free States are becoming every day more united in
sentiment and more earnest in resolve, and that, so soon as they are
thoroughly satisfied that secession is something more than empty
bluster, a public spirit will be aroused that will be content with no
half-measures, and which no Executive, however unwilling, can resist.

The country is weary of being cheated with plays upon words. The United
States are a nation, and not a mass-meeting; theirs is a government,
and not a caucus,--a government that was meant to be capable, and is
capable, of something more than the helpless _please don't_ of a
village constable; they have executive and administrative officers that
are not mere puppet-figures to go through the motions of an objectless
activity, but arms and hands that become supple to do the will of the
people so soon as that will becomes conscious and defines its purpose.
It is time that we turned up our definitions in some more trustworthy
dictionary than that of avowed disunionists and their more dangerous
because more timid and cunning accomplices. Rebellion smells no sweeter
because it i