ophy! deserving to be compared with that of the
modern Cockney who does not want his after-dinner rest to be disturbed
by even a lively discussion. "I say, look here, why have row?
Excessively unpleasant to have row, when a fellow wants to be quiet! I
say, don't!"

In fact, this "conservatism" was only another and convenient name for a
most dangerous type of moral and political paralysis. Its immediate
effect was to discourage discussion, and to induce an alarming apathy as
to all the vital questions of the day among men whose abilities
qualified them to be of essential service to their country. Their
adhesion to the ranks of the Democratic party, while increasing the
average intelligence of that organisation, without improving its public
virtue or private morals, served simply to give it greater numerical
strength. It was still in the hands of unscrupulous leaders, who,
intoxicated with their previous triumphs, believed that the nation would
submit to any measure which they saw fit to recommend. And who shall say
that their confidence was unreasonable? Did not all their past
experience justify such confidence? When had any one of their schemes,
no matter how monstrous it might at first have appeared, ever failed of
final accomplishment? Had they not repeatedly tested the temper and
measured the _morale_ of the people? Had they not learned to anticipate
with absolute certainty the regular sequence of national emotions,--the
prompt recoil as from impending dishonor, the excited public meetings,
the indignant remonstrance embodied in eloquent resolutions, then the
sober, selfish second-thought, followed by the question, What if the
South should carry out its threats and dissolve the Union? then the
alarm of the mercantile and commercial interest, then a growing
indifference to the very features of the project which had caused the
early apprehension, and lastly the meek and cowardly acquiescence in the
enacted outrage? Would not these arch-conspirators North and South have
been wilfully blind, if they had not seen not only that the nation was
sinking in the scale of public virtue, but that it had acquired "a
strange alacrity in sinking"?

Meanwhile they had learned a lesson, the value and significance of which
they fully appreciated. He must have been an inattentive student of our
political history, who has not observed that the successful prosecution
of any political enterprise has too often dignified its author in the