red wisdom, still fewer of extemporary, while there are unhappily
many who have a large stock of accumulated phrases, and hold their
parts of speech subject to immediate draft. In a country where the
party newspapers and speakers have done their best to make us believe
that consistency is of so much more importance than statesmanship, and
where every public man is more or less in the habit of considering what
he calls his "record" as the one thing to be saved in the general
deluge, a hasty speech, if the speaker be in a position to make his
words things, may, by this binding force which is superstitiously
attributed to the word once uttered, prove to be of public detriment.
It would be well for us if we could shake off this baleful system of
requiring that a man who has once made a fool of himself shall always
thereafter persevere in being one. Unhappily it is something more easy
of accomplishment than the final perseverance of the saints. Let us
learn to be more careful in distinguishing between betrayal of
principle, and breaking loose from a stupid consistency that compels
its victims to break their heads against the wall instead of going a
few steps round to the door. To eat our own words would seem to bear
some analogy to that diet of east-wind which is sometimes attributed to
the wild ass, and might therefore be wholesome for the tame variety of
that noble and necessary animal, which, like the poor, we are sure to
have always with us. If the words have been foolish, we can conceive of
no food likely to be more nutritious, and could almost wish that we
might have public establishments at the common charge, like those at
which the Spartans ate black broth, where we might all sit down
together to a meal of this cheaply beneficial kind. Among other
amendments of the Constitution, since every Senator seems to carry half
a dozen in his pocket nowadays, a sort of legislative six-shooter,
might we not have one to the effect that a public character might
change his mind as circumstances changed theirs, say once in five
years, without forfeiting the confidence of his fellow-citizens?

We trust that Mr. Johnson may not be so often reminded of his late
harangue as to be provoked into maintaining it as part of his settled
policy, and that every opportunity will be given him for forgetting it,
as we are sure his better sense will make him wish to do. For the more
we reflect upon it, the more it seems to us to contain, either dir