hat to the manifest advantages of freedom from
jealousies of any rivals; and from commitment, by any record, to schemes
or theories or sects or cabals, pursued by no hatreds, beguiled by no
attachments, Mr. Lincoln added a vigorous, penetrating, and capacious
intellect, and a noble, generous nature which filled his conduct of the
Government, in small things and great, from beginning to end, "with
malice to none and charity to all." These qualities were indispensable
to the safety of the Government and to the prosperous issue of our civil
war. In the great crisis of a nation struggling with rebellion, the
presence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler may make the
turning-point in the balance of its fate. Had Lincoln, in dealing with
the administration of government during the late rebellion, insisted as
George III. did, in his treatment of the American Revolution, upon "the
right of employing as responsible advisers those only whom he personally
liked, and who were ready to consult and execute his personal wishes,"
had he excluded from his counsels great statesmen like Seward and Chase,
as King George did Fox and Burke, who can measure the dishonor,
disorder, and disaster into which our affairs might have fallen? Such
narrow intelligence and perversity are as little consistent with the
true working of administration under our Constitution as they were under
the British Constitution, and as little consonant with the sound sense
as they are with the generous spirit of our people.

By the arrangement of his Cabinet, and his principal appointments for
critical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that nature had fitted him
for a ruler, and accident only had hid his earlier life in obscurity. I
cannot hesitate to think that the presence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase
in the great offices of State and Treasury, and their faithful
concurrence in the public service and the public repute of the
President's conduct of the Government, gave to the people all the
benefits which might have justly been expected from the election of
either to be himself the head of the Government and much else besides. I
know of no warrant in the qualities of human nature, to have hoped that
either of these great political leaders would have made as good a
minister under the administration of the other, as President, as both of
them did under the administration of Mr. Lincoln. I see nothing in Mr.
Lincoln's great qualities and great authority with