mes past of the danger of a dissolution
of the Union. Indeed, this danger has been so often held up as a threat
by one section, and so persistently used as a scarecrow by timid or
profligate men in the other, that it has become one of the commonplaces
of political contests. Our ears have hardly ceased to be tormented with
projects of reconstruction, and with suggestions of guaranties, and
pacifications, and mediation, and neutrality, armed or otherwise.
Border-State Conventions are projected, and well-meaning governors have
been arranging interviews or conducting correspondence with governors
who talked of Southern rights, and undertook to say what their States
would or would not permit the United States Government to do. Even a
Cabinet officer, of whom better things might have been expected, and by
whom better things are now nobly said and done, allowed himself to fall
into the error of explaining to the vacillating Governor of Maryland
that the intentions of the National Administration were purely
defensive. While such language is current at home, it is not strange
that foreigners should find themselves in a state of hopeless confusion
about us. Few European writers, except De Tocqueville, have ever shown a
clear comprehension of our political system; and the speeches of British
statesmen on American affairs are perhaps rather to be accounted for and
excused from want of information, than resented as hostile or insulting.
But it is time that this whole pernicious dialect should be exploded,
and the ideas which it represents be eradicated from the minds of
intelligent men everywhere.

The right of revolution it is needless to discuss. Resistance, in any
practicable method, to intolerable oppression, is the natural right of
every human being, and of course of every community. But such a right
is never included in the framework of organized civil society. From its
nature, it can form no part of a plan of government. The only formula
which embraces it is the famous one of "Monarchy tempered by Regicide";
and where that prevails, it seems to be adopted as a practical
expedient, rather than recognized as an established constitutional
maxim. But as a question of revolution the issue is not presented. If
it were, it would be easy to deal with. The only embarrassment in our
present condition, so far as reasoning goes, arises from confused
notions of constitutional law, and the inaccuracy of language which
necessarily attends t