not very likely to
throw away its political privileges, and the idea of a despotism resting
on an open ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the
waves of Boston Harbor. We know pretty well how much of sincerity there
is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found
in company with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the
nation. We have learned to put a true value on the services of the
watch-dog who bays the moon, but does not bite the thief!

The men who are so busy holy-stoning the quarterdeck, while all hands
are wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it
that would be very unsightly in fair weather. No thoroughly loyal man,
however, need suffer from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as
emergencies always give rise to. If any half-loyal man forgets his code
of half-decencies and half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the
peremptory justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres
of conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers who
are risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more satisfaction
than when an avowed traitor is caught and punished. For of all men who
are loathed by generous natures, such as fill the ranks of the armies
of the Union, none are so thoroughly loathed as the men who contrive
to keep just within the limits of the law, while their whole conduct
provokes others to break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping
an inch short of treason, and whose political morality has for its
safeguard a just respect for the jailer and the hangman! The simple
preventive against all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer
at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course
commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or
indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the
war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens
who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes
from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it
will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be
wrongs which demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing
the essential principle of our self-governing system is a figment
which its contrivers laugh over among themselves. Do the citizens of
Harrisburg or of Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality