The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-01-23
he TERT1UM QUID OF REVOLUTION.

| courses from which all well meaning people
would instinctively shrink if not impressed
with the idea that these coEusels and courses
! were in the line of manifest destiny. 1t is a
shrevd device of men who have resolved to
put vital interests of their country at peril, to
inculcate the belief they are in league with
fate in working out the inevitable. The radi-
Gals have succeeded in this way to throw
around their worst schemes certain charm
Of fatality which ought by all means to be ex-
ploded.
That revolutions never go backward may,
in restricted sense, be true. But it is also
tue that revolutionists who refuse to pause
shout of the extreme development of their
dogmas, invariably produce a reaction, sharp,
uncompromising and forcible in proportion to
the violence, impetuosity and excess of the
revolutionary movement. The New York
Times thinks that the Republican party is
now exposed by the extremists who control it
to the imminent peril of reaction. The same
| paper takes occasion to admonish the leaders
of the party against trusting implicitly in the
NOTION that -rcvciutions 20 backward;
and it endeavors 70 enforce its advice by lay
ing down the opposite proposition, that 'as
matter of fact, revolutions always go back
ward" In illustration and application of this
view. the Times says:
The English revolution of lG4O ran a career of
steady progress so long as it was contest for the
IightiUl power Of parliament; but when its yiO-
lence led to the execution Of the king and to the
radical doctrines aud demands of CrOmwell's ON
| dependents" which even Cromwell himself was
not always able to control, It provoked revul.
zion of public sentiment which made Monks re-
sctiorsry movement possible, and paved the way
| for return of a worse form of monarchy and
more degrading state of society, manners and
! politics than that out OF which the conflict
originally sprung. That revolution went back
| most decidedly and although future revolution
| completed the real work which the first had be.
gun, there was a long interval in which the reac.
ton had complete control of public affairs. The
seme thing is still more strikingly true of the
great French revolution. In its origin it was a
necessity. Its early stages were marked by clear
perception of national wants and judcious steps
for their attainment. But when, through the blum.
ders of its enemies, the control of il passed into
the hands Of the radicals and extremists of the
day, end they used it to deuge the land with
blood, and swept away every institu ion which
stood in The way Of their theories of equality and
government, reaction set in which led to the ar
bitrary dcspotism Of military power, and ultimIte'y
TO the restoration Of the BourbOns. That reyolu
ton, toe, went back ward-andits retrograie move
ment begun with The abandonment Of judicious and
same fate is quite likely to Overtake the revolution
achieved by the Republican party in the condition
ara prospects OF the colored race.
Just now the danger is that the efforts Of the
extreme men who have the direction of affalrs
will create a reaction that will postpone for years
all reform in the line Of their labors. They are
determined on universal suffrage for the negroes
at once; they Iun very serious risk of arOusiug
a hostility which will deny them suffrage on any
M M Thav
throw away good they might secure now, and
which would prepare the way for what they want
hereafter, and incur the peril OF losing all they
contend for, both now and in the future The
revolution, on whose bosom the men suppose
they ere peacefully floating to assured success is
very likely TO Ego backwGTd'-as have all revolu
tons in which unreasonable violence has obtained
tits obvious that in these remarks the Time
confounds reaction as a sequence of revolu-
tionary extravaganza andimpracticability with
the backward course Of the revolution itself
It's error in this particular is one of speech
rather than of thought. This is not the cas-.
however, when it assumes reaction to be Ii
eral reversal of revolution. The assumption
is not sustained by the historical instances
above cited or by many others Of like char
acter which might be adduced Reaction was
never known to literally reverse revolution.
Its effect when successful, has always been
to divert affairs from the direct line of revo-
luton, and to carry them to a result which
may be called terti,Ha q,.id, or a third some
thing different from what either the revolu-
tionary or the anti-revolutionary party origi- !
nally aimed at. History presents no example !
in which a destructive paroxysm of revolt |
ton was followed by precise or o substantive
restoration of the status quo. Revolutionary
excuses may be arrested, and reactonary ex-
cesses may superYene; but the two movements
combine to make step in historic progress
which never can be retraced.
The struggle between the radicals and the |
conservatives Of Rome in the days of Cato
and Cicero, of Clodius aud Catiline, did not /
end in the triumph of either party, but in the
empire which neither had sought. The
present French empire is a third something
which equally disappoints the legitimists and
the republicans of France. Neither the Carl
baldian party of movement nor the retro
grade party in Italy is satisfied with the solu-
ton which events are giving to the Italian
question.
German liberals WIG desired national unity,
and Of their opponents who wished to main
tain the old feudal divisions, to the actual
unifcation under King William of Prussia
effected by Bismarck. Whatever reaction
might take place in any of these cases, it is
certain that history will not take step back
ward to revive and rejnstal a dead past
Thus history teaches that the sum of the
oscillations of revolution and reaction must
always be a terti'lm qlrid. The antagonizing
forces in such movements would seem never
to collide on direct line, but at an angle
The result is composition of forces, and a
movement divergent from the original line of
either force.
If we apply these reflections to the politi-
,al situation in the United States we cannot
admit on the one hand, 'the possibility of re-
storing the exact political conditions which
preceded the late sectional struggle, or, on