the ratification or adoption of the pending negotiations. It may not be
just to say that the President borrowed his policy from Richmond; but it
is both just and true to say that the leaders of the Rebellion have been
incapable of suggesting a public policy more advantageous to themselves
than that which he has adopted. The President knows that the people have
been quiet and impartial observers of these proceedings; that the House
of Representatives has never in public session, nor in any of its
caucuses or committees, considered or proposed any measure looking to
his impeachment.

The grounds of his fear are known only to himself; but its existence
exerts a controlling influence over his private and public conduct.

Associated with this fear, and probably springing from it, is an intense
hatred of nearly all the recognized leaders of the party by which he was
nominated and elected to office. Evidence upon this point is not needed.
He has exhibited it in a manner and to a degree more uncomfortable to
his friends than to his enemies, in nearly every speech that he has
made, commencing with that delivered on the 22d of February last.

Superadded to these passions, which promise so much of woe to Mr.
Johnson and to the country, is an inordinate, unscrupulous, and
unreasoning ambition. To one theme the President is always constant,--to
one idea he is always true,--"He has filled every office, from that of
alderman of a village to the Presidency of the United States." He does
not forget, nor does he permit the world to forget, this fact. In some
form of language, and in nearly every speech, he assures his countrymen
that he either is, or ought to be, satisfied with this measure of
success. But have not his own reflections, or some over-kind friend,
suggested that he has never been elected President of the United States?
and that there yet remains the attainment of this one object of
ambition?

Inauguration day, 1865, will be regarded as one of the saddest days in
American annals. We pass over its incidents; but it was fraught with an
evil suggestion to our enemies, and it must have been followed by a firm
conviction in the mind of Mr. Johnson that he could not thereafter enjoy
the confidence of the mass of the Republican party of the country. He
foresaw that they would abandon him, and he therefore made hot haste to
abandon them. And, indeed, it must be confessed that there was scarcely
more inconsistency in that course o