s, and the idea of a despotism resting on an open
ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the waves of
Boston Harbor. We know pretty well how much of sincerity there is in the
fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found in company
with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the nation. We
have learned to put a true value on the services of the watch-dog who
bays the moon, but does not bite the thief!

The men who are so busy holy-stoning the quarterdeck, while all hands are
wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it that
would be very unsightly in fair weather. No thoroughly loyal man,
however, need suffer from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as
emergencies always give rise to. If any half-loyal man forgets his code
of half-decencies and half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the
peremptory justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres
of conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers who are
risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more satisfaction than
when an avowed traitor is caught and punished. For of all men who are
loathed by generous natures, such as fill the ranks of the armies of the
Union, none are so thoroughly loathed as the men who contrive to keep
just within the limits of the law, while their whole conduct provokes
others to break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping an inch short
of treason, and whose political morality has for its safeguard a just
respect for the jailer and the hangman! The simple preventive against
all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a
government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors,
is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the
enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor
against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this
negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have
done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the
attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs which
demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing the essential
principle of our self-governing system is a figment which its contrivers
laugh over among themselves. Do the citizens of Harrisburg or of
Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality of an executive act
meant in good faith for t