f
view of an enlightened statesmanship, we find nothing in it that is not
contemptible; but when we regard it as the accredited exponent of the
moral sense of a majority of our people, it is saved from contempt,
indeed, but saved only because contempt is merged in a deeper feeling
of humiliation and apprehension. Unparalleled as the outrages in Kansas
have been, we regard them as insignificant in comparison with the
deadlier fact that the Chief Magistrate of the Republic should strive to
defend them by the small wiles of a village attorney,--that, when the
honor of a nation and the principle of self-government are at stake, he
should show himself unconscious of a higher judicature or a nobler
style of pleading than those which would serve for a case of petty
larceny,--and that he should be abetted by more than half the national
representatives, while he brings down a case of public conscience to the
moral level of those who are content with the maculate safety which they
owe to a flaw in an indictment, or with the dingy innocence which is
certified to by the disagreement of a jury.

These things are the logical consequences of that profound national
demoralization which followed the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Bill
and alone made its execution possible,--a demoralization wilfully
brought about, for selfish ends, in that sad time which saw our greatest
advocates and our acutest politicians spending all their energy of mind
and subtlety of argument to persuade the people that there was no higher
law than that rule of custom and chicane woven of the split hairs of
immemorial sophistry, and whose strongest fibre is at the mercy of an
obstinate traverse juror,--no law higher than the decree of party,
ratified by a popular majority achieved by the waiters on Presidential
providence, through immigrant voters whom the gurgling oratory of
the whiskey-barrel is potent to convince, and whose sole notion of
jurisprudence is based upon experience of the comparative toughness
of Celtic skulls and blackthorn shillalahs. And such arguments were
listened to, such advocates commended for patriotism, in a land from
whose thirty thousand pulpits God and Christ are preached weekly to
hearers who profess belief in the Divine government of the world and the
irreversible verdicts of conscience!

The capacity of the English race for self-government is measured by
their regard as well for the forms as the essence of law. A race
conservativ