raw to their ranks a few
well-meaning persons, whose easy circumstances make them uneasy,--a
few leaders of defunct parties, with a general capacity for
misdirection and nobody to misdirect; but it will avail the
Republican Party more to claim and to prove that it is the party of
Man, no matter what his color or creed or race,--of the sacredness of
that property which every human being has in himself,--and of the
obligation of that law which outlives legislatures and statute-books,
and is the only real security of all law. The cry of "Conservatism"
may be efficacious for a season; but time will make plainer and
plainer the distinction between the false conservatism which for its
own benefit would keep things as they are, which smooths imminent
ruin delusively over, as Niagara is smoothest on the edge of the
abyss, and that true conservatism which works upon things as they are,
to prepare them for what they must be,--recognizes the necessity of
change, to forestall revolution with healthy development,--and
believes that there is no real antagonism between Old and New, but
only a factitious one, the result of man's obstinacy or self-seeking.

[Footnote 1: London Cotton-Plant, 21st August, 1858.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. 18th September. 1858.]

[Footnote 3: It is a coincidence that the recapture of runaways
did more than anything else to abolish villanage in England.]

[Footnote 4: See COBB _on Slavery_, (Philadelphia: T. & J.W.
Johnson & Co., 1858,) where these admissions are made. (Introd. pp.
218-220.) This work, written by Mr. Thomas R. R. Cobb, of Georgia, is,
considering the natural prepossessions of the author, singularly calm
and candid. We commend it to our readers, as bringing together a
great deal of information, and still more as showing the remarkable
change which has come over the Southern mind, even among moderate men,
on the subject of Slavery. We shall take a future occasion to notice
it more fully.]

LITERARY NOTICES.

_Brief Expositions of Rational Medicine; To which is prefixed The
Paradise of Doctors, a Fable_. By JACOB BIGELOW, M.D., Late
President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Physician of the
Massachusetts General Hospital, etc. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and
Company, 13, Winter Street. 1858.

Two doctrines, each containing a fraction of truth, have lain
soaking in the mind of our free-and-easy community so long, that
what strength they had is well-nigh got out of them.

Do