uys with a horrible doubt as to the real value of the verbal
currency they were obliged to receive. But, unfortunately, his own
countrymen were also unprovided with a price-current of the latest
quotation in phrases, and the same gift of groping and inconclusive
generalities which perhaps was useful as a bewilderment to would-be
hostile governments abroad was often equally effective in disheartening
the defenders of nationality at home. We cannot join with those who
accuse Mr. Seward of betraying his party, for we think ourselves
justified by recent events in believing that he has always looked upon
parties as the mere ladders of ambitious men; and when his own broke
under him at Chicago in 1860, he forthwith began to cast about for
another, the rounds of which might be firmer under his feet. He is not
the first, and we fear will not be the last, of our public men who have
thought to climb into the White House by a back window, and have come
ignominiously to the ground in attempting it. Mr. Seward's view of the
matter probably is that the Republican party deserted him six years
ago, and that he was thus absolved of all obligations to it. But might
there not have been such a thing as fidelity to its principles? Or was
Mr. Seward drawn insensibly into the acceptance of them by the drift of
political necessity, and did he take them up as if they were but the
hand that had been dealt him in the game, not from any conviction of
their moral permanence and power, perhaps with no perception of it, but
from a mere intellectual persuasion of the use that might be made of
them politically and for the nonce by a skilful gamester? We should be
very unwilling to admit such a theory of his character; but surely what
we have just seen would seem to justify it, for we can hardly conceive
that any one should suddenly descend from real statesmanship to the use
of such catch-rabble devices as those with which he has lately
disgusted the country. A small politician cannot be made out of a great
statesman, for there is an oppugnancy of nature between the two things,
and we may fairly suspect the former winnings of a man who has been
once caught with loaded dice in his pocket. However firm may be Mr.
Seward's faith in the new doctrine of Johnsonian infallibility, surely
he need not have made himself a partner in its vulgarity. And yet he
has attempted to vie with the Jack-pudding tricks of the unrivalled
performer whose man-of-business he is, i