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full of quaint good-humour, striving with limited knowledge or capacity to do what seemed best at the moment, thrust into the midst of difficulties almost beyond the grasp of human intellect, he struggled on—as he termed it, in his homely language, 'pegging away'—until the world saw that under an uncouth exterior there was a large fund of shrewd sense and mother-wit, with an entire absence of malice. An instinctive sense of this led all to shudder at his fate. He was an untutored child of nature, and the manner of his death seemed an outrage on nature, on mankind. But now that expression has been fully given to these feelings, we must not permit truth to be sacrificed. As President of the United States, the rule of Abraham Lincoln stands wholly apart from personal qualities, good or bad. That rule is proper matter for criticism, and must stand a keener test than that of sentiment. Respect is not to be paid to the memory of the dead by fulsome praise or falsification of history. Unfortunately, it is a proverbial expression-' to lie like an epitaph;' but no such license may be used where great principles and the destiny of millions of people are at stake.

President Lincoln was another example of that deplorable rule, long enforced by the exigencies of the Union, which practically excludes all able and eminent men from the Presidential office. Mr. Seward, the proper chief of the Republican party, was passed over, as in other times Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. To prevent a disruption of the party, it was necessary to nominate a person unknown even by name to the infinite majority of the American people. Mr. Lincoln was therefore chosen as usual, not by virtue of his eminence, but by virtue of his not being eminent. He was by birth a Southern man, a Kentuckian; his wife also Southern, some of her relatives being on the Confederate side throughout the war. He entered upon office uncontrolled by a popular decision. If, indeed, it might be said that any leaning of the public mind could be detected, the majority in the North appeared to have reconciled themselves to a peaceful separation, and leading politicians, such as Mr. Seward and Mr. Everett, had expressed their abhorrence of the idea of shedding their brothers' blood. The Cotton States had seceded, but the great Border States, with Virginia at their head, clung anxiously to the Union. The history of the United States afforded a valuable guide in this emergency. The Union had been broken up before, peacefully. Two of the States were out of it for quite two years, at the end of which time, finding their isolated condition intolerable, they re-entered the fold. Now, so long as the Border States remained with the Union it was hardly possible for the Cotton States to form an antagonistic power that could endure.

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Not only the vast resources of the North, but the greatest of their own sister States would have been against them. Had a Statesman been in office at Washington, he would probably have spoken thus: I hold that your action is wholly wrong. I believe you have no warrant for it in the Constitution, no just cause in any fact that has occurred. Try the experiment, however, if you are resolved to do so. It has been tried by North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, who found it not to answer. Meantime I must take such measures for self-protection as judgment may direct; but unless attacked I will not lift one finger to shed the blood of my fellow-citizens.' Had this course been taken, it can hardly be doubted that the Union would have been restored in much less time, without bloodshed, and with trifling cost. For at first there existed a Union party, a minority, but still an important party in every Cotton State but one. This party would have had not only the North, but the whole influence of the Border States to support it. Any one may see what this war would have been without the people of Virginia. Now Virginia would have been on the other side. Hence the Cotton States would not only have been void of the necessary resources for an independent position, but would have been a divided people. This division would have widened into dissensions, increasing day by day; for the excitement of the hour would have been followed by a reaction and by disappointment at the results. The cost of a separate Government and military force would have compelled taxation, hitherto unknown. The Federal Government, without going to war, might easily have caused the heavy cost of an armed peace, and it had the power to place very irksome restraints on the commerce and correspondence of the country. Thus the Union party, although originally a minority, would have grown daily under such influences, and probably in less than the four years which have gone by, would have become a majority, and have brought back the States into the Union. The policy which might have produced these results was the only one permissible under the Constitution. It grants no power to coerce a State, and such power was excluded advisedly, on the reasoning of Madisonthat it would be monstrous to provide for the maintenance by force of a Union that was based on free will. The coercion thus excluded by the founders of the Union, Mr. Lincoln resolved to employ. It was an error disastrous to the country. For not only was there a simple way to attain the end desired, but the use of force for the purpose was destructive of the very object sought. By force it was quite possible to conquer the South, but not to restore a Union. To apply the name of a Union to the relations that exist between Russia and Poland, would be ludicrous;

ludicrous; such are now the relations of North and South. Between sentient beings, union implies a joint, a mutual action that can only proceed from accordance of will. The same principle holds good with great communities. And when one section has conquered another section of the same people, slain the flower of its manhood, devastated its soil, and stands amidst the ruin it has made, in the triumph of superior power, this can only be called the restoration of a union by substituting the sound for the true sense of words.

And when Mr. Lincoln made this deplorable error, how did he carry out the policy which he had chosen? By sending back the deputation that waited upon him from the Border States, with an answer so offensive as to force upon them the decision to leave the Union. By calling out 75,000 men for three months, exhibiting an ignorance of the magnitude and resources of the country he proposed to coerce, such as hardly could have been found in Europe. By fitting out a secret expedition at New York to reinforce Fort Sumter, although an understanding of honour existed with the Commissioners whom the South had sent to Washington, that no change should be made in the status quo. But there is matter more grave even than this. The reason assigned by Mr. Lincoln for deciding on the invasion of the Southern States, was the oath he had taken to maintain the Constitution. But the President does not take any oath to maintain the Union. He went on to do what his oath did not compel, and to break what that oath enjoined. To maintain the Constitution required him to maintain those great rights-freedom of person, of speech, of the press—which it expressly guarantees, and which his government trampled upon without any real necessity and without the smallest concern. If so terrible a means as the sword must needs be employed under a stern sense of duty, that duty plainly required that he who proceeded to destroy the lives of others for an alleged breach of law, should himself maintain that law with the most scrupulous care. Now there is hardly one great principle of that Constitution-nay more, we cannot recall any one great political principle avowed and cherished in America, whether within or outside of the Constitution, which was not violated by Mr. Lincoln's Govern

ment.

The Declaration of Independence, for instance, announced in sonorous terms that governments 'derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' What an illustration of this, to force a detested government upon a people who refuse their consent. Again, that same document, which is read every 4th of July in order to inculcate these principles, goes on to teach the Vol. 118.-No. 235.

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world that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of certain ends (one of them being the pursuit of happiness), 'it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.' These are brave words, and this is precisely what the people of the South proceeded to do. Alas, the principles that are so lofty and virtuous when they tell in our favour, how black and wicked they become when the enemy has them on his side! If there be any one principle thoroughly established in the North, as the rule of political action, it is that the majority shall govern and the minority submit. This is, indeed, the main argument of those who support the Federal cause. The majority, they say, elected a president, and the minority was bound to acquiesce. How did Mr. Lincoln respect this principle, when it appeared advantageous to abandon it? By contriving a scheme of government for the conquered States, in which a minority so insignificant as onetenth was to represent and rule over the majority of nine-tenths! We say nothing of the rights of neutrals, formerly regarded in the United States as so particularly sacred; we pass over the express clauses of the Constitution on the issuing of search warrants, on delay in bringing to trial, on the issuing of the writ of habeas corpus, &c.; but there are two points that cannot be omitted in reviewing this subject-rebellion and secession.

It seems strange now-a-days to hear of Mr. Lincoln as the advocate of rebellion, as its earnest advocate, on a large scale or a small scale, whether by the whole of a people or part of a people; but here are his words delivered in Congress when a member of the House of Representatives: Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up and shake off the existing Government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right-a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing Government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionise and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.'* As the people of the North now regard with affection the memory of their late President, and treasure up all his sayings, it may be well to ponder on these words, not as a proof of astounding inconsistency, but as an invitation to consider whether a people who have been educated in such doctrines are to be greatly blamed for putting

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them in practice. Mr. Lincoln changed his position-changed his views. It never occurred to him when he held them that they might come home to his own case, But the scholar is to be judged, not by the altered position of the schoolmaster, but by the lesson he was taught. And if the people of the South desire a sanction and a warrant for their action, none could be imagined more cogent, more exactly applicable to the case, or deserving of more respect at the hands of the North, than these teachings of Mr. Lincoln. We are not aware that he ever advocated secession, but he did something more than merely to advocate it. He approved of, ratified, and adopted secession in the most pernicious form in which it can ever occur-the only form in which it is forbidden by the Constitution. A part of the old state of Virginia desired to secede from the rest, and continue with the Union. The Constitution says, Art. iv. sec. 3, 'but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State.' No words can be clearer than these. In the face of them, Western Virginia was permitted to secede, and this new State was formed within the unquestioned jurisdiction of the parent State. At that time it was in the highest degree probable that the South would acquire its independence. In this view it was very important that the frontier of Virginia should not extend, as it did, to the Ohio River, into the very heart of the North. To avoid this danger, it was thought politic to cut off that portion of the State. The risk at the time was no doubt serious; the object was of large importance; but motives of prudence or advantage are no answer to the plain fact that the disintegration of a State, secession in its worst form, was accepted and carried out by Mr. Lincoln when it told in favour of the North.

There is a subject that can never be passed over in reviewing these events-that of slavery. On this subject President Lincoln ever spoke with honesty and candour. He made no hypocritical pretension to other principle in the matter than that of using it as a means of saving the Union. At the outset of the war he referred to the Chicago platform, on which he was elected, in proof that he had no authority to interfere with slavery in the States, and he went further, adding not only that he had no right to interfere, but that he had no inclination to do so. Shortly afterwards the Federal Congress passed, with his approval, an addition to the Constitution, 3rd March, 1861, which ran thus: "That no amendmeut shall be made to the Constitution which will authorise or give Congress power to abolish or interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labour or servitude by the laws of said State.' In the rapid progress of events and growth of passion

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