Year: 1868

ward ana Iolst tnemseives upon the
movement with clamor and promise, and, by
deluding nation, give its impulse false di-
rection-perverting efforts noble in their be-
ginning to ends unworthy, horrible. afro
cious. Promising more than the honest and
strong men with whom the movement began
will dare to promise, these fellows often carry
the people, and the purpose Of the movement
is lost by its being turned aside to secure re-
venges or enrich the rascals. So in England
the revolution became only party fight and Q
struggle of the factions to dominate each
other, till the strong hand Of Cromwell put the
parties down; and in France the men who
made the revolution, the strong natures that
wrought for the welfare Of the country, were
pushed aside and hustled into obscurity by
wretches whose promises were more to the
appetite of the Paris mob; and these dragged
the nation in blood, passing the government
from hand to hand till it went to the Directory;
and there Napoleon seized it and ''saved the
revolution" from adding contempt and degra-
dation to the horror of its history.


Our own revolution is now just in that stage
where faction does what it may to divert
great endeavor from its true purpose. Having
accomplished the object of the revolution in
changing the law on which was based the only
fact in the way of our progress-having put
down the armies that were in the field to sus-
tain that fact and waged war with such
success that there was o universal assent
to the change-we seemed to have
done all, and needed only to organize
to be done so easily. There were generals
who had. presented no great figure in making
war and wanted to be heard of in making
peace. There were Congressman and politi-
clans of various stripes who had not secured
the fame they thirsted for; and there were
journalists who, having argued'more for seces-
sion than for the Union, wanted to make
show of very intense patriotism to stand well
with the future. Here were factious elements
enough. They hoped to secure the popular
favor by stamping out" the conquered foe,
and they found the President in their way. At
once all their fury was turned on him, and
they resolved to destroy him and the law, too,
if it was likely to protect him. But there
were men who respected the law if not the
President; and in striking at the law the radi-
cal faction found these men in their way, just
as the Jacobins found the Girondists in their
way in France. All the fury of the radicals is
now directed to the ruin of the men who will
not accept their will. Already they even so
far parody the Jacobins that they raise the
ominous cry of ''blood." If they are deferred
from removing the President blood must be
shed, they say. They perhaps know best who
is to shed it, as the threat is their own, and
the cry comes from no throats but such as are
hoarse or cracked with shouting their fury;
and while the faction lashes furiously at the
obstacle it finds in men who regard the law,
there looms dimly in the future the figure that
may stand for the strong individual will-the
Cromwell or Napoleon that is to give rounded
completeness to the drama. Whether the
figure will come forward IN that character, or
whether the clamorous faction will not be 80
cut short in its career that his occasion will
not come, this depends upon our people,
whose will and decision on all this trouble can
be taken under our system as it could not IN
England or France.