his sage view of ours when we borrowed their
money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go
in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go
or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They
have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which
of necessity they have either _discarded_ or _retained_ the right of
secession, as they insist it exists in ours. If they have discarded it,
they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours. If they
have retained it, by their own construction of ours they show that to be
consistent they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it
the easiest way of settling their debts or effecting any other selfish
or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration, and
upon which no government can possibly endure.

If all the States save one should assert the power to _drive_ that one
out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians
would at once deny the power and denounce the act as the greatest
outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act,
instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the
seceding of the others from that one," it would be exactly what the
seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, they make the point that the one,
because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because
they are a majority, may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle
and profound on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that
power which made the Constitution and speaks from the preamble, calling
itself "we, the people."

It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the
legally qualified voters of any State, except, perhaps, South Carolina,
in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men
are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called
seceded States. The contrary has not been demonstrated in any one of
them. It is ventured to affirm this even of Virginia and Tennessee; for
the result of an election held in military camps, where the bayonets are
all on one side of the question voted upon, can scarcely be considered
as demonstrating popular sentiment. At such an election all that large
class who are at once, _for_ the Union and _against_ coercion would be
coerced to vote against