He considers the result a
signal triumph of good principles and good men, and a very pointed rebuke
of bad ones. He says the people did it. He forgets that the "people," as
he complacently calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a
minority of the whole people by about four hundred thousand votes--one
full tenth of all the votes. Remembering this, he might perceive that the
"rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think--that the
majority may not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that minority.
The President thinks the great body of us Fremonters, being ardently
attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a few wicked and
designing men. There is a slight difference of opinion on this. We think
he, being ardently attached to the hope of a second term, in the
concrete, was duped by men who had liberty every way. He is the
cat's-paw. By much dragging of chestnuts from the fire for others to eat,
his claws are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit
for further use. As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters had
turned him out of doors, "He 's a shelled peascod" ("That 's a sheal'd
peascod").
So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the domestic
institutions of existing States," and of "doing everything in our power
to deprive the Constitution and the laws of moral authority," for the
whole party on belief, and for myself on knowledge, I pronounce the
charge an unmixed and unmitigated falsehood.
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