there is reason to believe, made purposely
abhorrent, to her dearest convictions and most venerable traditions; and
yet the same Government tampers with armed treason, and lets _I dare
not_ wait upon _I would_, when it is a question of protecting the
acknowledged property of the Union, and of sustaining, nay, preserving
even, a gallant officer whose only fault is that he has been too true
to his flag. While we write, the newspapers bring us the correspondence
between Mr. Buchanan and the South Carolina "Commissioners," and surely
never did a government stoop so low as ours has done, not only in
consenting to receive these ambassadors from Nowhere, but in suggesting
that a soldier deserves court-martial who has done all he could to
maintain himself in a forlorn hope, with rebellion in his front and
treachery in his rear. Our Revolutionary heroes had old-fashioned
notions about rebels, suitable to the straightforward times in which
they lived,--times when blood was as freely shed to secure our national
existence as milk-and-water is now to destroy it. Mr. Buchanan might
have profited by the example of men who knew nothing of the modern
arts of Constitutional interpretation, but saw clearly the distinction
between right and wrong. When a party of the Shays rebels came to
the house of General Pomeroy, in Northampton, and asked if he could
accommodate them,--the old soldier, seeing the green sprigs in their
hats, the badges of their treason, shouted to his son, "Fetch me my
hanger, and I'll _accommodate_ the scoundrels!" General Jackson, we
suspect, would have accommodated rebel commissioners in the same
peremptory style.

While our government, like Giles in the old rhyme, is wondering whether
it is a government or not, emissaries of treason are cunningly working
upon the fears and passions of the Border States, whose true interests
are infinitely more on the side of the Union than of Slavery. They are
luring the ambitious with visionary promises of Southern grandeur
and prosperity, and deceiving the ignorant into the belief that the
principles and practice of the Free States were truly represented by
John Brown. All this might have been prevented, had Mr. Buchanan in his
Message thought of the interests of his country instead of those of his
party. It is not too late to check and neutralize it now. A decisively
national and patriotic policy is all that can prevent excited men from
involving themselves so deeply that they w