f Cabinet-making in Europe, above all in France
under Louis Philippe, I do not forebode anything good in the coming-on
shocks and eruptions, and I am sure these must come. This Cabinet as
it stands is not a fusion of various shadowings of a party, but it is
a violent mixing or putting together of inimical and repulsive forces,
which, if they do not devour, at the best will neutralize each other.

Senator Wilson answered Douglass in the Senate, that "when the
Republican party took the power, treason was in the army, in the navy,
in the administration," etc. Dreadful, but true assertion. It is to be
seen how the administration will act to counteract this ramified
treason.

What a run, a race for offices. This spectacle likewise new to me.

The Cabinet Ministers, or, as they call them here, the Secretaries, have
old party debts to pay, old sores to avenge or to heal, and all this by
distributing offices, or by what they call it here--patronage. Through
patronage and offices everybody is to serve his friends and his party,
and to secure his political position. Some of the party leaders seem to
me similar to children enjoying a long-expected and ardently wished-for
toy. Some of the leaders are as generals who abandon the troops in a
campaign, and take to travel in foreign parts. Most of them act as if
they were sure that the battle is over. It begins only, but nobody, or
at least very few of the interested, seem to admit that the country is
on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an
article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the
leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no
one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with
lightning-like velocity spreading fire of hellish treason.

The diplomats utterly upset, confused, and do not know what god to
worship. All their associations were with Southerners, now traitors.
In Southern talk, or in that of treacherous Northern Democrats, the
diplomats learned what they know about this country. Not one of them
is familiar, is acquainted with the genuine people of the North; with
its true, noble, grand, and pure character. It is for them a terra
incognita, as is the moon. The little they know of the North is the
few money or cotton bags of New York, Boston, Philadelphia,--these
would-be betters, these dinner-givers, and whist-players. The
diplomats consider Seward as the essence of Northern