empt to evade the
responsibility. The impartial historian will find in the Statutes an
undisputable confirmation of my assertions. The majority met all the
prejudices against taxation, indebtedness, paper currency, draft, and
other similar cases.

And all the time the majority of Congress was stormed by traitors,
by intriguers, by falsifiers and prisoners of public opinion; the
minority in Congress taking the lead therein. Many who ought to
have supported the majority either fainted or played false. The
so-called good press, neither resolute nor clear-sighted, nor
far-seeing, more than once confused, and as a whole seldom
thoroughly supported the majority.

If the good press had the indomitable courage in behalf of good and
truth, that the _Herald_ has in behalf of untruth and of mischief,
how differently would the affairs look and stand!

_February 19._--Jackson first formed, attracted and led on the
people's opinion. Has not Mr. Lincoln thrown confusion around?

_February 19._--The Supreme Court of the United States has before it
the prize cases resulting from captures made by our navy. The
counsel for the English and rebel blockade-runners and pilferers
find the best point of legal defence in the unstatesmanlike and
unlegal wording of the proclamation of the blockade, as concocted
and issued by Mr. Seward, and in the repeated declarations contained
in the voluminous diplomatic correspondence of our Secretary of
State,--declarations asserting that _no war whatever is going on in
the Federal Republic_. No war, therefore no lawful prizes on the
ocean. So ignorance, and humbug mark every step of this foremost
among the pilots of a noble, high-minded, but too confiding people.

The facts, the rules, and the principles in these prize cases are
almost unprecedented and new; new in the international laws, and
new in the history of governments of nations. Seldom, if ever, were
so complicated the powers of government, its rights, and the duties
of neutrals, the rights and the duties of the captors, and the
condition of the captured. This rebellion is, so to speak, _sui
generis_, almost unprecedented on land and sea. The difficulties and
complications thus arising, became more complicated by the either
reckless or unscientific (or both) turn given by the State
Department in conceding to the rebels the condition of belligerents.
Thus the great statutory power of the sovereign, (that is, of the
Union through its president)