or do all of them mean the Republican party? Or, finally,
does Mr. Fisher shrink from the conclusions presented by his logic, and
is his vaguely convenient linking together of different words intended
to leave his position gracefully doubtful? And in that case, do the
Baltimore nominations, with their innocent unconsciousness, supply his
political needs? It is not easy to answer these questions. We begin now
upon the views of a Pennsylvania Oppositionist; and quicksilver defied
not more utterly the skill of Raymond Lullius than the doctrines of the
Philadelphia school perplex the inquiries of sharply defined New England
minds. The rudimentary state of Republican principles may nowhere else
be so clearly seen as in Pennsylvania. Four years of the Democratic
administration of her "favorite son" have done much to make her less
favored sons into good Republicans; but the State needs another
Democratic President. Mr. Fisher appears to much more advantage in
pulling down than in building up. We have hitherto seen only the keen,
fearless dissector of fraud and hypocrisy; we are now to contemplate a
circumspect alarmist, who dreads to call things by their right names
for fear of unpleasant consequences. He is such a master of English,
so judicious in the use of middle terms,--so shrewd a fencer
altogether,--that even his timidity cannot make him other than a
formidable opponent.

Mr. Fisher, believing that slavery receives ample protection from a fair
interpretation of the Constitution, holds that

"Congress has plenary power over the Territories, often exercised on
this subject of slavery. It may be said that Congress has on various
occasions prohibited slavery in the Territories. True; but with the
consent and cooeperation of the Southern States. The people of all the
States have equal right in the Territories. To exclude the people of the
Slave States, therefore, _without their consent_, would be unequal and
opposed to the spirit of the Constitution."

Certainly it would. Who proposes to do it? No living man, woman, or
child. It is worth noticing, by the way, that the Republican party is
not committed to the doctrine of carrying out the principle of the
Wilmot Proviso. But supposing it were, Mr. Fisher's argument has
no force or direction, unless he can establish his suppressed
premise,--that the exclusion of slavery from the Territories is the
exclusion of "the people of the Slave States" from the Territories.
And to ma