pting some measures, timidly
shrinking from others,--reasoning justly about some things, reasoning
falsely about things equally important,--endowed at times with singular
foresight, visited at times by incomprehensible blindness: boatmen on a
mighty river, strong themselves and resolute and skilful, plying their
oars manfully from first to last, but borne onward by a current which no
human science could measure, no human strength could resist.

They knew that the resources of the country were exhaustless; and they
threw themselves upon those resources in the only way by which they
could reach them. Their bills of credit were the offspring of enthusiasm
and faith. The enthusiasm grew chill, the faith failed. With a little
more enthusiasm, the people would cheerfully have submitted to taxation;
with a little more faith, the Congress would have taxed them. In the
end, the people paid for the shortcomings of their enthusiasm by seventy
millions of indirect taxation,--taxation through depreciation; the
Congress paid for the shortcomings of their faith by the loss of
confidence and respect. The war left them with a Federal debt of seventy
million dollars, and State debts of nearly twenty-six millions.

Could this have been avoided? Could they have done otherwise? It is
easy, when the battle is won, to tell how victory might have been bought
cheaper,--when the campaign is ended, to show what might perhaps have
brought it to an earlier and more glorious close. It is easy for us,
with the whole field before us, to see that from the beginning, from the
very first start, although the formula was _Taxation_, the principle was
_Independence_; but before we venture to pass sentence, ought we not to
pause and weigh well our judgment and our words,--we who, in the fiercer
contest through which we are passing, have so long failed to see, that,
while the formula is _Secession_, the principle is _Slavery_?

THROUGH-TICKETS TO SAN FRANCISCO: A PROPHECY.

We write this article in September. Within a few days, and without much
heralding, has occurred an event of prime importance to our country's
future. This is the opening from New York to St. Louis of a continuous
broad-gauge line under the title of the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway. This line is twelve hundred miles long, and pursues the
following route: By the New York and Erie Road, from New York to the
station of Salamanca; thence, by a separate road of the Atlantic and