imental at the sight of our deadly
struggle with the demon of treason, it was because they witnessed
our helplessness, and witnessed the uninterrupted chain of faults
and of bad policy; it was because they and the whole world saw the
want of earnestness in our official leaders; and from all this these
_Messieurs_ concluded that the patriots of the North never will be
able to crush the traitors in the South. So speak the French
diplomatic documents, so speaks Mercier, Drouyn de l'Huys and Louis
Napoleon; and has not the Seward-Weed influence, paramount in the
policy of the Government, brought about all these bad results,
palsied the war, and thus almost justified the officiousness of the
_Messieurs_?

_February 13._--Many forebode the downfall, the dissolution, and the
disappearance of the Republican party. That may be, and if so then
one of the cardinal laws of human progress, development and
ascension, will be fullfilled. _The initiator either perishes by the
initiated, or the initiator perishes, disappears because his
special mission, his task is done._

The progress of humanity is marked by the sacrifice and death of its
initiators. Such was the end of the founders of religions, of
societies; such of political bodies. Osiris, Lycurgus, Romulus,
Christ, the martyrs, the apostles, are a few from numberless
illustrations that might be cited. The Long Parliament, the French
Convention, disappeared after having fullfilled the work of
destruction pointed out to them by the genius of progress and of our
race. As an organized political party the Republican may disappear
with the war, for slavery is finally destroyed. This is the noble
initiation and solution fulfilled by the Republican party. To
destroy slavery and the political defenders and props of slavery,
was the mission that was fatally thrown or entrusted by inexorable
destiny to the Republican party. With the destruction of slavery,
disappears from the political life of America the _Northern man with
Southern principles_; those very dregs of dregs of all times and of
all political bodies and societies. Slavery is destroyed both
virtually and _de facto_, new issues are looming, new solutions will
be given, and new men will bear the new word.

All in creation, and in every party, has its light and its shadow,
its pure principle, its pure men and its dregs. Every party has its
faults and its shortcomings. The dregs fall, and the work of the
party is done. Some of t