Year: 1865

Inc country has practiced toward Mr..
johnson more generous forbearance than
mas been accorded to any other President
since Washington. This is less tribute to
the man, than a patriotic impulse set in ac-
tion by the appalling circumstances of his
accession. Under that sudden schock the
country, for the first time, was alarmed for
the existence of the government. The in
sstant unanmity with which all parties stood
by the new President was protest against
ASSASSINATION, against anarchy, against at
tempts to change the personnel of the gov
ernment or the politics of the country ex-
cept by the republican methods of free dis
cussion and regular elections. Nothing
more creditable has ever occurred in our
history. But the danger which struck us
all with sudden dismay is past; and hence
forward President johnson, like every ruler
OF free people, must encounter the criti-
cism by which responsibility is enforced upon
public officers.


:. There has been, thus far, disposition to
discriminate between President johnson
and his official advisers. These advisers
were not Of his. appointments and it was
presumed that their stay in the cabinet was
Il temporary convenience. IF he had in
tended to keep them, it was assumed he
would control them; and it was impossible
to believe that the outrageous acts of Secre-
tary Stanten were approved by any honest
statesman sworn to defend the Constitution.
1t was easy to see how, in closing a great
war and settling an enormous mass of un-
llnlShed business, the services of an officer
familiar with it's details mig hit bo valuable,
especially as the President had had no per-
sonal connection with the administration of
the war. With the great mass of new busi-
ness emerging, he could not afford to master
the unwieldy details of system that had
served its day and was falling into disuse.
Shockingly as Stanton had violated the Con-
stitution it was not difficult to discover
plausible reasons for his temporary reten-
tion. But Mr.. johnson is in the fourth
month; and, for ought that appears, the
cabinet Is as firmly seated under him as
his predecessor that appointed 1t. An in
dulgent country cannot much longer con-
sent to distinguish between the acts of the
administration and the acts of its response
BILE chief If the most conspicuous and Of
tensive heads of departments are to 90 with
Mr.. johnson through his term, or through
any large and considerable part of it, the
country. is justified in concluding that he
keeps them because he approves of their
conduct; and that their acts are his acts:
and that he ought to be held responsible for
their usurpations.


The country will come reluctantly to this
conclusion. Even after its confidence is
shaken, It will, for a long while, hope against
hope. But certain it is, that this people,
Graded in liberty, will stand by no man who
abandons the principles of the Constitution.
| The subordination of the military to the
civil power, government by law instead of
government by arbitrary will, the habeas
corpus, trial by jury, free speech free press,
and free elections, will be resolutely claimed
and no man. or party can stand who are
faithless to these guarantees. Great allow
ance was made, during the war, for the diff
fculties of the situation, but the plea of an
over-ruling public necessity will no longer
avail The people new demand that officers
sworn to support the Constitution shall
keep their oaths. They will give their con-
tidcnce to no public officer who is deliber-
atey recreant to republican principles of
government


On one great subject President johnson
satisfies the lust expections of the country.


IT he stands by his recognition of state rights
In the reorganization of the state govern
ments, the people will support him till that
battle is won. But the other great question
of the supremacy of the law is too urgent
to be much longer adjourned; and consid-
erlng how the law has been trampled under
foot, defed, and spit upon, even since Mr..
johnson 5 accession, we can see no other
suitable atonement than the removal of the
offending members of the cabinet, and fill
ing their places with honest, law-abiding
citizens. - World