izenship is the necessary consequence, as it is the only effectual
warranty, of freedom; and accordingly we are in favor of distinctly
settling beforehand some conditional right of admission to it. We have
purposely avoided any discussion on gradualism as an element in
emancipation, because we consider its evil results to have been
demonstrated in the British West Indies. True conservative policy is
not an anodyne hiding away our evil from us in a brief forgetfulness.
It looks to the long future of a nation, and dares the heroic remedy
where it is scientifically sure of the nature of the disease. The only
desperate case for a people is where its moral sense is paralyzed, and
the first symptom is a readiness to accept an easy expedient at the
sacrifice of a difficult justice. The relation which is to be final and
permanent cannot be too soon decided on and put in working order,
whether for the true interest of master or slave; and the only safe
relation is one that shall be fearlessly true to the principles in
virtue of which we asserted our own claim to autonomy, and our right to
compel obedience to the government so established. Anything short of
that has the weakness of an expedient which will erelong compel us to
reconstruct our reconstruction, and the worse weakness of hypocrisy,
which will sooner or later again lay us open to the retribution of that
eternal sincerity which brings all things at last to the test of its
own unswerving standard.

SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT?

1865

It has been said that the American people are less apt than others to
profit by experience, because the bustle of their lives keeps breaking
the thread of that attention which is the material of memory, till no
one has patience or leisure to spin from it a continuous thread of
thought. We suspect that this is not more true of us than of other
nations,--than it is of all people who read newspapers. Great events
are perhaps not more common than they used to be, but a vastly greater
number of trivial incidents are now recorded, and this dust of time
gets in our eyes. The telegraph strips history of everything down to
the bare fact, but it does not observe the true proportions of things,
and we must make an effort to recover them. In brevity and cynicism it
is a mechanical Tacitus, giving no less space to the movements of Sala
than of Sherman, as impartial a leveller as death. It announces with
equal _sangfroid_ the surrender of Kirb