mployed to establish it and our
fathers have already once employed to maintain it? Are we degenerate?
Has the manhood of our race run out?" Unfair administration was
apprehended. "This law," he said, "belongs to a class, which class is
composed of those laws whose object is to distribute burthens or benefits
on the principle of equality. No one of these laws can ever be
practically administered with that exactness which can be conceived of in
the mind. A tax law . . . will be a dead letter if no one will be
compelled to pay until it can be shown that every other one will be
compelled to pay in precisely the same proportion according to value;
nay, even it will be a dead letter if no one can be compelled to pay
until it is certain that every other one will pay at all. . . . This
sort of difficulty applies in full force to the practical administration
of the draft law. In fact, the difficulty is greater in the case of the
draft law"; and he proceeded to state the difficulties. "In all these
points," he continued, "errors will occur in spite of the utmost
fidelity. The Government is bound to administer the law with such an
approach to exactness as is usual in analogous cases, and as entire good
faith and fidelity will reach." Errors, capable of correction, should,
he promised, be corrected when pointed out; but he concluded: "With these
views and on these principles, I feel bound to tell you it is my purpose
to see the draft law faithfully executed." It was his way, as has been
seen, sometimes to set his thoughts very plainly on paper and to consider
afterwards the wisdom of publishing them. This paper never saw the light
till after his death. It is said that some scruple as to the custom in
his office restrained him from sending it out, but this scruple probably
weighed with him the more because he saw that the sincere people whom he
had thought of addressing needed no such appeal. It was surely a wise
man who, writing so wisely, could see the greater wisdom of silence.

The opposition to the Conscription Law may be treated simply as one
element in the propaganda of the official Opposition to the
Administration. The opposition to such a measure which we might possibly
have expected to arise from churches, or from schools of thought
independent of the ordinary parties, does not seem, as a matter of fact,
to have arisen. The Democratic party had, as we have seen, revived in
force in the latter part of 1862.