There is a past for which Republicans have indeed no respect,—­but it is one of recent date; there is a history from which they refuse to take lessons except for warning and not example,—­but it is a history which is not yet written.  When the future historian shall study that past and gather materials for writing that history, he will find cause for wonder at the strength of that national vitality which could withstand and survive, not the efforts of Mr. Choate’s dreadful reformers, but of an administration calling itself Democratic, which, with the creed of the Ostend Manifesto for its foreign, and the practice of Kansas for its domestic policy, could yet find a scholar and a gentleman like Mr. Choate to defend it.

Mr. Choate charges the Republicans with being incapable of a generalization.  They can, at least, generalize so far as this, that, when they find a number of sophistries in an argument, they conclude that the cause which requires their support must be a weak one.  One of the most amusing of these in the oration before us is where (using the very same arguments that were urged in favor of that coalition in Massachusetts against the morality of which the then party of Mr. Choate exclaimed so loudly) he extols the merits of Compromise in statesmanship.  In support of what he says on this subject, he quotes from a speech of Archbishop Whately a passage in favor of Expediency.  It is really too bad, that the Primate of Ireland, of all men living, should be made the abetter in two fallacies.  In the first place, Mr. Choate assumes that there are certain deluded persons who affirm that all compromises in politics are wrong.  Having stuffed out his man of straw, he proceeds gravely to argue with him, as if he were as cunning of fence as Duns Scotus.  One would think, from some of the notions he deems it necessary to combat, that we were living in the time of the Fifth-Monarchy men, and that Captain Venner with his troop was ready to issue from the garrets of Batterymarch Street, to find Armageddon in Dock Square, and the Beast of the Revelation in the Chief of Police.  There is no man who believes that the ship of State, any more than an ordinary vessel, can be navigated by the New Testament alone; but neither will be the worse for having it aboard.  The Puritans sailed theirs by Deuteronomy, but it was a Deuteronomy qualified by an eye to the main chance.  Mr. Choate’s syllogism may be stated thus:  Some compromises are necessary in order to carry on a free government; but this is a compromise; therefore it is necessary.  Here is the first fallacy.  The other syllogism runs thus:  Expediency is essential in politics; so also is compromise; therefore some particular compromise is expedient.  Fallacy number two.  The latent application in this part of Mr. Choate’s oration is, of course, to Compromises on the Slavery question.  We agree with him, that no man of sense will deny that compromise is essential in politics, and especially in our politics.