he demanded that
criminals at the bar should have a seat on the bench, and an equal voice
with the judges, in deciding on their own case, the effrontery of
Executive pretension went beyond all bounds of Congressional endurance.

The real difference at first was not on the question of imposing
conditions,--for the President had notoriously imposed them
himself,--but on the question whether or not additional conditions were
necessary to secure the public safety. The President, with that facility
"in turning his back on himself" which all other logical gymnasts had
pronounced an impossible feat, then boldly look the ground, that, being
satisfied with the conditions he had himself exacted, the exaction of
conditions was unconstitutional. To sustain this curious proposition he
adduced no constitutional arguments, but he left various copies of the
Constitution in each of the crowds he recently addressed, with the
trust, we suppose, that somebody might be fortunate enough to find in
that instrument the clause which supported his theory. Mr. Johnson,
however, though the most consequential of individuals, is the most
inconsequential of reasoners; every proposition which is evident to
himself he considers to fulfil the definition of a self-evident
proposition; but his supporters at Philadelphia must have known, that,
in affirming that insurgent States recover their former rights by the
fact of submission, they were arraigning the conduct of their leader,
who had notoriously violated those "rights." They took up his work at a
certain stage, and then, with that as a basis, they affirmed a general
proposition about insurgent States, which, had it been complied with by
the President, would have left them no foundation at all; for the States
about which they so glibly generalized would have had no show of
organized governments. The premises of their argument were obtained by
the violation of its conclusion; they inferred from what was a negation
of their inference, and deduced from what was a death-blow to their
deduction.

It is easy enough to understand why the Johnson Convention asserted the
equality of the Johnson reconstructions of States with the States now
represented in Congress. The object was to give some appearance of
legality to a contemplated act of arbitrary power, and the principle
that insurgent States recover all their old rights by the fact of
submission was invented in order to cover the case. Mr. Johnson now
int