an admission
that he has usurped power, that he has violated the Constitution, that
he is guilty of offences for which he ought to be impeached. Thus do the
suggestions which the President tenders as his defence furnish
conclusive evidence that his conduct is wholly indefensible.

While then the President cannot defend his conduct, it is possible for
others to explain it.

Its explanation maybe found in some one or in several of the following
propositions:--

1. That the Rebel leaders have acquired a control over the President,
through the power of some circumstance not known to the public, which
enables them to dictate a policy to him.

2. That he fears impeachment, and consequently directs all his efforts
to secure more than a third of the Senate, so as to render a conviction
impossible.

3. That he seeks a re-election, and purposes to make the South a unit in
his favor, as the nucleus around which the Democratic party of the North
must gather in 1868.

4. That he desires to reinstate the South as the controlling force in
the government of the country.

In reference to the first proposition, we are restricted to the single
remark, that it is not easy to imagine the Rebels capable of making any
demand upon the Executive which, in his present state of mind, he would
not be prepared to grant. He has pardoned many of the leaders and
principal men of the Rebellion, and some of them he has appointed to
office. He has resisted every attempt on the part of Congress to furnish
protection to the loyal men of the South, and he has witnessed and
discussed the bloody horrors of Memphis and New Orleans with
cold-blooded indifference. Early in his term of office he offered an
immense reward for the person of Jefferson Davis; and now that the
accused has been in the official custody of the President, as the head
of the army, for more than fifteen months, he has neither proclaimed his
innocence and set him at liberty, nor subjected him to trial according
to the laws of the land. Davis is guilty of the crime of treason. Of
this there can be no doubt. He is indicted in one judicial district. The
President holds the prisoner by military authority; and the accused
cannot be arraigned before the civil tribunals. Davis was charged by the
President with complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. There is
much evidence tending to sustain the charge; but the accused is neither
subjected to trial by a military commission, nor turn