the
incendiary and the man who stops or kills the criminal in _flagrante
delicto_.

_March 3._--After a tedious labor I waded through the State papers.
O, what an accumulation of ignorance! Almost every historical and
chronological fact misplaced, misunderstood, perverted, distorted,
wrongly applied. And how many, many contradictions! Only when Mr.
Seward can simply--(very, very seldom) point out to England that by
_this_ and _that fact_ and _act_ England violates the international
laws and rules of neutrality and of good comity between two
_friendly_ governments and nations: then, _only_, Mr. Seward's
papers acquire historical and political signification. But not his
spread eagleism, not his argumentation; and, still less his broad
and inexhaustible and variegated information. Diplomatic and
statesmanlike character can not be conceded to his State papers.
Few, very few, will read them, although foreign Courts, ministers,
statesmen, princes, and the so-called celebrated women are
complimented and deluged with them. The most pitiless critics of
these productions would be the smaller clerks in the Departments of
Foreign Affairs in London and Paris. Only they are not fools to
waste their time on such specimens of literature.

_March 4._--Congress adjourned. This Thirty-Seventh Congress marks a
new era in the American and in the world's history. It inaugurated
and directed a new evolution in the onward progress of mankind. The
task of this Congress was by far more difficult and heavier than was
the task of the revolutionary and of the constitutional Congresses.
The revolutionary Congress had to fight an external enemy. The
tories of that epoch were comparatively less dangerous than are now
all kinds of Copperheads; it had to overcome material wants and
impediments, and not moral, nor social ones. That Congress was
omnipotent, governed the country, and was backed by its virgin
enthusiasm, by unity of purpose, and was not hampered by any
formulas and precedents. The Thirty-Seventh Congress had to fight a
powerful enemy, spread almost over two-thirds of the territory of
the Union; it had to fight and stand, so to speak, at home against
inveterate prejudices, against such bitter and dangerous domestic
enemies as are the Northern men with Southern principles. This
Congress was manacled by constitutional formulas, and had to carry
various other deadweights already pointed out. In the first part of
the session, Pike, Member of