The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1861-02-08

Sacer-the Sacred Mountain-co nsecrated the
patched up peace But the scar remained.
The fable Of the belly and the members pro-
euced but an ephemeral result Al
most Immediately afterwards, the question Of
public lands agitated anew the hostile sec
tons, and the Agrarian law came, acting much
as the compromise measure of 1850 did, creating
lull to be soon broken, followed by Volyero's
Publilian measure, which only for while salts
fed the people. New conflicts, ending in the
Reform billof Terentilius; after which innova-
tons, murders, and dictatorship, drove the
Plebeians to another secession to Mount Janicu-
lum, which was appeased by the Caauleian law
consented to by the Pa tricians for the healing
of grievances. Encroachments alternated
with resistance, until, finally, the Licinian ro
cations established something more than a
merely nominal equality of order in the old
Roman republic. Unexampled prosperity; the
conquest of Italy and Spain; the subjugation
of Carthage; and the establishment of nearly
universal rule, were the sequence of this wise
basis of amity. Those were the palmy days of
Rome. But the old leaven fingered, and gle
rious, halcyon years and generations, begat
oligarchic and democratic divisions worse than
had ever existed before. Out Of the strifes be-
tween Senatorial nobility and the "Frenice
mob" grew the rivalry Of Octavius and Grac
cbus; then the armed hostility of Scipio and
Crassus; later, the more extended conflicts of
Marius and Sylla; and, with the latter such
catering TO popular passions as prepared the
way for Pompey and Caesar; for the gladiato-
rial episode of Spartacus; the respective re-
bellions Of Cataline and Brutus; and, last of
all, the triumvirate of Lepidus, Antony and
Augustus, which ended in the imperial despot-
ism that inaugurated the days of the decline
and fall Of Rome.
1t will require but short period for the
United States to sink into depths lower than
Rome reached after lapse of centuries If
the good sense, the wisdom, the civilization,
the humanity of the age do not rescue the country
from such resort to the ultima ratio of sections,
as Mr. Seward would prepare for us, it will
need but very few months to overthrow the
prosperity which over three-quarters Of Gen.
fury Of industry and energy have created, and
to exhaust the means which it has cost so much
toll and labor to accumulate. If the counsels
of peace do not prevail; if the greatest of all
calanities, war between brother and
brother, is to be the result of the present
crisis, oceans of blood and millions of treasure
will be expended in order to carry out, osten-
sibly, an impracticable theory, with no other
ultimate end than the uprising Of as many ar
mics as there will be ambitious leaders of con-
dottieri to prey upon the vitals of the country
Some Napoleon of the Western Continent may
at last bind it together under one common
yoke, but it is more probable that petty
generals will extend throughout the United
States the direful scenes that have been wit
messed for over twenty five years in Mexico, and
that utter anarchy will be the consequence Of
the "irrepressible conflict" which the republi-
can party have SO suicidally initiated.
Nine out of ten of the people of the Northern
States repudiatc the coercion sentiments which
are hurrying the republic so rapidly towards
a precipice. The views promulgated, recently,
by Mr.. Seward, have excited the deepest feel
ing of distrust and alarm, and it is the COM
mon utterance of mems mouths that any at
tempt to carry out his theory will meet with
no less resistance in the non-slaveholding
than in the slaveholding States. The assembly
of troops at Washington, under the pretext of
preventing an invasion of the capital; the eager
ness for action OF military men; the idea of
bloodshed with which the public mind is becom-
ing familiarized; and the fiippancy with which
portion of the press and of our national
representatives discourse respecting the
greatest disasters that can befal mankind, are
premonitory signs of national suicide so
| atrocious, so wicked, that they have caused
sober minded men everywhere to shrink with
| dismay from the prospect which is opening be-
| fore them. The masses of our population, in
| all the States, are Union loving and conserva-
tive. They see the gigantic footsteps with
| which anarchy is progressing and they are
prepared to cry out with horror against those
who would plunge the republic its future
destiny, its fair fame, and the hopes that hu-
mainly have placed upon it into an abyss of
ruin, helplessncss and misery. They loathe the
thought Of such military despotism or anarchy
as fanaticism would create, through the means
of an internecine strife, and they will hold
those responsible who exert their influence to
widen the breach which it is of so much i'm
portance should be healed.
The New TARIFF BuL-THE VOICE OF THE
PEOPLE UPON IT-The introduc tion of tho Nor