the traitors
so eagerly sought to put all these interests under his jurisdiction
without motive,--unless his eager and unnecessary, and, as was declared
and is now agreed, assumed jurisdiction over it, his "far-seeing" care
and untiring defence of them, their appeal to his decisions, were all
mistakes,--unless all these, and his manner, their motives, and the
assured results, coincided so as by the law of chances was
impossible,--he was conscious. To deny it is to say that he was imbued
with the spirit of evil.

The world knows by what means he assumed to settle these questions. We
have seen something of the nature of his arguments. With these, too, men
are somewhat familiar, and by these let them judge of him as a jurist.

There is not in them all one faint recognition of the axioms of
law,--one position founded on the laws of nature or the rules of eternal
justice and the right,--one notice of the great primal rules laid down
by all jurists and great judges of ancient and modern times, or of the
precepts of religion by which any magistrate in a Christian land must
expect to be governed, or to be held infamous forever. Nay, more: he
does not recognize at all those fundamental principles of the
Constitution and Declaration which are stated in plain terms in the
first lines of both. He did worse than torture and pervert language: he
reversed its meaning. He denied the undoubted facts of history. He
denied the settled truths of science. He slandered the memory of the
founders of the government and framers of the Declaration. He was ready
to cover the most glorious page of the history of his country with
infamy, and insulted the intelligence and virtue of the civilized world.

Where, outside his "_axiom in morals and politics_" can be found so
monstrous a combination of ignorance, injustice, falsehood, and impiety?
Ignorant of the meaning of an "axiom"; denying the truths of science;
falsifying history; setting above the Constitution the most odious
theory of tyranny, long before exploded; scoffing at the rules of
justice and sentiments of humanity,--he tied in a knot those cords which
must end the life of his country or be burst in revolution.

He well knew, too, what would be the effects of his decision. Avowedly
he was ready to lay the time-honored principles of civil right and the
ancient law at the feet of the Slave Power. The passions of a mighty
people never raged more fiercely than whilst that last cause was be