t entirely consistent with
itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,--a right
and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for
his protection.

One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly
instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican
government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic
governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or
denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain
them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war.

There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive
teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come
to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a
day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress
and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing
bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the
tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes
the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result
is the same,--society is instructed, or may be.

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing
are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern
through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of
approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very
gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and
corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm
calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the
war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain
unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a
blinding blaze of national prosperity?

It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never
come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and
it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite
of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,--poured out against
slavery during thirty years,--even they must confess, that, in all the
probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued
its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the
Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at