ational creditor, be impaired.

(4.) Let pardons issue only on satisfactory assurance that the
applicant, who has been engaged for four years in murdering our
fellow-citizens, shall sustain the Equal Rights, civil and political, of
all men, according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence;
that he shall pledge himself to the support of the national debt; and,
if he be among the large holders of land, that he shall set apart
homesteads for all his freedmen.

Following these simple rules, clemency will be a Christian virtue, and
not a perilous folly.

The other proverb has its voice also, saying plainly, Follow common
sense, and do not, while escaping one danger, rush upon another. You are
now escaping from the whirlpool of war, which has threatened to absorb
and ingulf the Republic. Do not rush upon the opposite terror, where
another shipwreck of a different kind awaits you, while Sirens tempt
with their "song of death." Take warning: _Seeking to escape from
Charybdis, do not rush upon Scylla_.

Alas! the Scylla on which our Republic is now driving is that old rock
of _concession and compromise_ which from the beginning of our history
has been a constant peril. It appeared in the convention which framed
the National Constitution, and ever afterwards, from year to year,
showed itself in Congress, until at last the Oligarchy, nursed by our
indulgence, rebelled. And now that the war is over, it is proposed to
invest this same Rebel Oligarchy with a new lease of immense power,
involving the control over loyal citizens, whose fidelity to the
Republic has been beyond question. Here, too, are Sirens, in the shape
of belligerent traitors, suing softly that the Republic may be lured to
the old concession and compromise. _Alas! that, escaping from Charybdis,
we should rush upon Scylla!_

The old Oligarchy conducted all its operations in the name of State
Rights, and in this name it rebelled. And when the Republic sought to
suppress the Rebellion, it was replied, that a State could not be
coerced. Now that the Rebellion is overthrown, and a just effort is made
to obtain that "security for the future" without which the war will have
been in vain, the same cry of State Rights is raised, and we are told
again that a State cannot be coerced,--as if the same mighty power
which directed armies upon the Rebellion could be impotent to exact all
needful safeguards. It was to overcome these pretensions, and stamp _E
Pluri