t education and the greatest accumulation of property
in the hands of the most holders were the most likely to be carried
away by what are called agrarian theories. All that New England and the
West demand is that America should be American; that every relic of a
barbarism more archaic than any institution of the Old World should be
absolutely and irrecoverably destroyed; that there should be no longer
two peoples here, but one, homogeneous and powerful by a sympathy in
idea. Does Mr. Johnson desire anything more? Does he, alas! desire
anything less? If so, it may be the worse for his future fame, but it
will not and cannot hinder the irresistible march of that national
instinct which forced us into war, brought us out of it victorious, and
will not now be cheated of its fruits. If we may trust those who have
studied the matter, it is moderate to say that more than half the
entire population of the Free States is of New England descent, much
more than half the native population. It is by the votes of these men
that Mr. Johnson holds his office; it was as the exponent of their
convictions of duty and policy that he was chosen to it. Not a vote did
he or could he get in a single one of the States in rebellion. If they
were the American people when they elected him to execute their will,
are they less the American people now? It seems to us the idlest of all
possible abstractions now to discuss the question whether the
rebellious States were ever out of the Union or not, as if that settled
the right of secession. The victory of superior strength settled it,
and nothing else. For four years they were practically as much out of
the Union as Japan; had they been strong enough, they would have
continued out of it; and what matters it where they were theoretically?
Why, until Queen Victoria, every English sovereign assumed the style of
King of France. The King of Sardinia was, and the King of Italy, we
suppose, is still titular King of Jerusalem. Did either monarch ever
exercise sovereignty or levy taxes in those imaginary dominions? What
the war accomplished for us was the reduction of an insurgent
population; and what it settled was, not the right of secession, for
that must always depend on will and strength, but that every inhabitant
of every State was a subject as well as a citizen of the United
States,--in short, that the theory of freedom was limited by the
equally necessary theory of authority. We hoped to hear less in fu