e how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the weak
policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at Revolution till they
learn to think the coarse reality as easy and pretty as the vaudeville
they have been acting. They are fast coming to the conclusion that the
list of grievances put forward by the secessionists is a sham and
a pretence, the veil of a long-matured plot against republican
institutions. And it is time the traitors of the South should know that
the Free States are becoming every day more united in sentiment and more
earnest in resolve, and that, so soon as they are thoroughly satisfied
that secession is something more than empty bluster, a public spirit
will be aroused that will be content with no half-measures, and which no
Executive, however unwilling, can resist.

The country is weary of being cheated with plays upon words. The United
States are a nation, and not a mass-meeting; theirs is a government,
and not a caucus,--a government that was meant to be capable, and is
capable, of something more than the helpless _please don't_ of a village
constable; they have executive and administrative officers that are not
mere puppet-figures to go through the motions of an objectless activity,
but arms and hands that become supple to do the will of the people so
soon as that will becomes conscious and defines its purpose. It is time
that we turned up our definitions in some more trustworthy dictionary
than that of avowed disunionists and their more dangerous because more
timid and cunning accomplices. Rebellion smells no sweeter because it
is called Secession, nor does Order lose its divine precedence in human
affairs because a knave may nickname it Coercion. Secession means chaos,
and Coercion the exercise of legitimate authority. You cannot dignify
the one nor degrade the other by any verbal charlatanism. The best
testimony to the virtue of coercion is the fact that no wrongdoer ever
thought well of it. The thief in jail, the mob-leader in the hands of
the police, and the murderer on the drop will be unanimous in favor of
this new heresy of the unconstitutionality of Constitutions, with its
Newgate Calendar of confessors, martyrs, and saints. Falstaff's famous
regiment would have volunteered to a man for its propagation or its
defence. Henceforth let every unsuccessful litigant have the right to
pronounce the verdict of a jury sectional, and to quash all proceedings
and retain the property in controversy by se