ba is unable to raise a loan of five
millions for the current expenses of Government. Nor is this the worst;
the moral bankruptcy at Washington is more complete and disastrous than
the financial, and for the first time in our history the Executive is
suspected of complicity in a treasonable plot against the very life of
the nation.

Our material prosperity for nearly half a century has been so
unparalleled, that the minds of men have become gradually more and more
absorbed in matters of personal concern; and our institutions have
practically worked so well and so easily, that we have learned to trust
in our luck, and to take the permanence of our government for granted.
The country has been divided on questions of temporary policy, and the
people have been drilled to a wonderful discipline in the manoeuvres
of party-tactics; but no crisis has arisen to force upon them a
consideration of the fundamental principles of our system, or to arouse
in them a sense of national unity, and make them feel that patriotism
was anything more than a pleasing sentiment,--half Fourth of July and
half Eighth of January,--a feeble reminiscence, rather than a living
fact with a direct bearing on the national well-being. We have had long
experience of that unmemorable felicity which consists in having no
history, so far as history is made up of battles, revolutions, and
changes of dynasty; but the present generation has never been called
upon to learn that deepest lesson of politics which is taught by a
common danger, throwing the people back on their national instincts, 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