for disasters
they were, though six months of temporizing had so lowered the public
sense of what was due to the national dignity, that people were glad to
see the Government active at length, even if only in setting fire to its
own house.

We are by no means inclined to criticize the Administration, even if
this were the proper time for it; but we cannot help thinking that there
was great wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing with a
mob,--"First fire grape-shot _into_ them; after that, over their
heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already
embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have been
a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican Party. Instead of
keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at issue, namely,
the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when displeased with the
result of an election, the bare question of Secession, pure and simple,
they allowed their party to become divided, and to waste themselves
in discussing terms of compromise and guaranties of slavery which had
nothing to do with the business in hand. Unless they were ready to
admit that popular government was at an end, those were matters already
settled by the Constitution and the last election. Compromise was out
of the question with men who had gone through the motions, at least, of
establishing a government and electing an anti-president. The way to
insure the loyalty of the Border States, as the event has shown, was to
convince them that disloyalty was dangerous. That revolutions never go
backward is one of those compact generalizations which the world is so
ready to accept because they save the trouble of thinking; but, however
it may be with revolutions, it is certain that rebellions most commonly
go backward with disastrous rapidity, and it was of the gravest moment,
as respected its moral influence, that Secession should not have time
allowed it to assume the proportions and the dignity of revolution,
in other words, of a rebellion too powerful to be crushed. The secret
friends of the Secession treason in the Free States have done their
best to bewilder the public mind and to give factitious prestige to a
conspiracy against free government and civilization by talking about the
_right_ of revolution, as if it were some acknowledged principle of the
Law of Nations. There is a right, and sometimes a duty, of rebellion, as
there is also a right and somet