ave been so much flabby and
diseased flesh on the body-politic was to have been expected; and that
it would show itself chiefly in the large cities, where foul humors and
leprosy are sure to break out, if anywhere, upon slight irritation,
(contrast the corrupt vote of New York City with Missouri and Maryland
giving their voices for freedom!) was likewise foreseen. That the malady
continues, and by what curative process it is to be subdued and rendered
harmless,--this is what concerns us now.

We have at last demonstrated, to the satisfaction of our arrogant
Southern friends, let us trust, that the despised Yankee, the
dollar-worshipper, is as prompt to fight for a principle as they for
power and a mistaken right of property,--ready to give blood and
treasure without stint, all for an idea; and that, having reluctantly
set his foot in gore, to draw back is not possible to him, for his heart
is indomitable, and his soul relentless,--in his soul sits Nemesis
herself. We have taught the slaveholding insolence the final lesson,
that there is absolutely nothing to hope from the pusillanimity it
counted upon. To the world abroad, also, that Tuesday's portentous
snow-storm of ballots, covering every vestige of treason here, to the
trail of the Copperhead, and whitening the face of the whole land with a
purer faith, will be more convincing than our victories in the field.
The bubble of Republicanism, which was to display such alacrity at
bursting, is not the childish thing it was deemed, but granitic, with a
fiery, throbbing core; its outward form no mere flashy film, blown out
of chimeras and dreams, but a creation from the solid strata of human
experience, upheaved here by the birth-throes of a new era:--

"With inward fires and pain,
It rose a bubble from the plain,"

secure and enduring as Monadnock or Mount Washington.

We have proved that we are a nation equal to the task of self-discipline
and self-control,--a new thing on this planet. Hitherto, on the stage of
history, kings and princes have been the star-actors: in them all the
interest of the scene has centred: they and a few grand favorites were
everything, and all the rest supernumeraries, "a level immensity of
foolish small people," of no utility except to support them in their
pompous parts. But we have found that "Hamlet" does very well with
Hamlet left out. In place of the prince we will have a principle.
Persons are of no account: the President is of