ior of the Union. Very probably his
imagination, his ardent wishes, carry him away, and confuse that clear
insight into events which alone constitutes the statesman.

Suggested to Sumner to demand the reduction of the tariff on certain
merchandises, on the plea of fraternity of the working American people
with their brethren the operatives all over Europe; by it principally
I wished to alleviate the condition of French industry, as I have full
confidence in Louis Napoleon, and in the unsophisticated judgment of
the genuine French people. The suggestion did not take with the
Senate.

When the July telegraph brought the news of the victory at Romney
(Western Virginia), it was about midnight. Mr. Seward warmly
congratulated the President that "_the secession was over_." What a
far-reaching policy!

When the struggle will be over, England, at least her Tories,
aristocrats, and politicians, will find themselves baffled in their
ardent wishes for the breaking of the Union. The free States will
look tidy and nice, as in the past. But more than one generation will
pass before ceases to bleed the wound inflicted by the lies, the
taunts, the vituperations, poured in England upon this noble,
generous, and high-minded people; upon the sacred cause defended by
the freemen.

These freemen of America, up to the present time, incarnate the
loftiest principle in the successive, progressive, and historical
development of man. Nations, communities, societies, institutions,
stand and fall with that principle, whatever it be, whereof they are
the incarnation; so teaches us history. Woe to these freemen if they
will recede from the principle; if they abandon human rights; if they
do not crush human bondage, this sum of all infamies. Certainly the
question paramount to all is, to save and preserve pure
self-government in principle and in its direct application. But
although the question of slavery seems to be incidental and
subordinate to the former, virtually the question of slavery is twin
to the former. Slavery serves as a basis, as a nurse, for the most
infamous and abject aristocracy or oligarchy that was ever built up in
history, and any, even the best, the mildest, and the most honest
oligarchy or aristocracy kills and destroys man and self-government.

From the purely administrative point of view, the principle whose
incarnation is the American people, the principle begins to be
perverted. The embodiment of self-government fill