ting upon the wall. He ought to
have discerned in this general movement the signs of a deep, earnest,
and irrepressible conviction on the part of the North. It is no slight
cause which can start such general and enthusiastic expressions of
popular feeling; they cannot be manufactured; they are not the work of
mere party excitement; there is nothing spurious and nothing hollow in
them; but they well up from the deep heart of nations, showing that a
chord of sympathy has been touched, with which it is fatal to tamper or
to sport. Call it fanaticism, if you will; call it delusion; call it
anything; but recollect also that it is out of such feelings that
revolutions are born, and by them that awful national crises are
determined.

But Mr. Buchanan has not profited, as we shall see, by the monition. His
initial act, the choice of a cabinet, in which the only man of national
reputation was superannuated, and the others were of little note, gave
small hope that he would do so; and his subsequent mistakes might have
been augured from the calibre of the counsellors by whom he chose to
be surrounded.--But let the men pass, since our object is to discuss
measures.

The questions with which the President and his cabinet have had to deal,
without following them in the order either of time or importance, may
be classified as the Mormon question, the Financial question, the
Filibuster question, and the Kansas question. All these required, for
a proper adjustment of them, firmness rather than ability,--a clear
perception of the principles of right, rather than abstruse policy,--and
vigor of execution, rather than profound diplomatic skill. Yet we do not
perceive that our government has displayed, in regard to the treatment
of any of these questions, either firmness or ability. It has employed
policy enough and diplomacy enough, but the policy has been incoherent
and the diplomacy shallow. At the end of the first year of its rule, the
most striking result of its general management is the open defection of
many of its most powerful friends, and the increased earnestness and
energy of all its foes.

The difficulty with the Mormons originated, before the accession of the
present administration, in a hasty and improper extension of the Federal
authority over a people whose customs and religious opinions were
utterly incompatible with those of our own people. The inhabitants of
Utah were averse from the outset to the kind of government pr