ticular play? Advertisement they did not lack, with the whole
Democratic press and the Department of State at their service, not to
speak of the real clown being allowed to exhibit himself at short
intervals upon the highest platform in this or any other country. And
if we ask for sensation, never were so many performers exhibited
together in their grand act of riding two horses at once, or leaping
through a hoop with nothing more substantial to resist them than the
tissue-paper of former professions, nay, of recent pledges. And yet the
skill of the managers had something greater still behind, in
Massachusetts linked arm in arm with South Carolina. To be sure, a
thoughtful mind might find something like a false syllogism in pairing
off a Commonwealth whose greatest sin it has been to lead the van in
freedom of opinion, and in those public methods of enlightenment which
make it a safeguard of popular government, with an Oligarchy whose
leadership has been in precisely the opposite direction, as if both had
equally sinned against American ideas. But such incongruities are
trifles no greater than those of costume so common on every stage; and
perhaps the only person to be pitied in the exhibition was Governor
Orr, who had once uttered a hope that his own State might one day walk
abreast with the daughter of Puritan forethought in the nobler
procession of prosperous industry, and who must have felt a slight
shock of surprise, if nothing more, at the form in which Massachusetts
had chosen to incarnate herself on that particular occasion. We cannot
congratulate the Convention on the name of its chairman, for there is
something ominously suggestive in it. But, on the other hand it is to
be remembered that Mr. Doolittle has a remarkably powerful voice, which
is certainly one element in the manufacture of sound opinions. A little
too much latitude was allowed to Mr. Raymond in the Address, though on
the whole perhaps it was prudent to make that document so long as to
insure it against being read. In their treatment of Mr. Vallandigham
the managers were prudent. He was allowed to appear just enough not
quite to alienate his party, on whom the new movement counts largely
for support, and just not enough to compromise the Convention with the
new recruits it had made among those who would follow the name
Conservative into anything short of downright anarchy. The Convention,
it must be confessed, had a rather hard problem to solve,--no