Has Massachusetts ever mobbed an envoy or brutally assaulted a Senator of South Carolina?  Has any Northern State ever nullified an article of the Federal Constitution, as every seaboard Slave-State has always done in respect to the colored citizens of the North?  When a man’s allowing himself to be kicked comes to be reckoned an outrage on the kicker, then Mr. Cushing’s notion of what constitutes a “just cause of war” will deserve as much consideration as Mr. G.T.  Curtis’s theory that hustling a deputy-marshal is “levying” it.  We can remember when the confirmation of an ambassador to England (where the eminent fitness of the nomination was universally conceded) was opposed by several Southern Senators on the ground that he had expressed an interest in the success of West India emancipation.  If Original Democrats have their way, it will not be long before it is made constructive treason to have read that chapter of the Acts of the Apostles which relates the misguided philanthropy of Philip in endeavoring to convert an Ethiopian into anything but a chattel.

We are inclined to think that a too amiable willingness to be kicked has been generally considered “just cause of war as between foreign governments,”—­especially on the part of the stronger of the two.  History seems to show this,—­and also, that the sooner a nation gets over its eccentric partiality for this kind of appeal to its reasoning faculty, the more likely it is to avoid the risks of war.  At any rate, the forbearance of the South has been such, that, in spite of the great temptation, she has hitherto refrained from sending her fleets and armies northward, and we are glad to find that Mr. Cushing is inclined to take a cheerful view of the permanency of our institutions.  He tells us, it is true, in one place, that the success of the Republican Party would be “the de facto dissolution of the Union”; but in a moment of calmer reflection he assures us that there are thirty million Americans who stand ready “to devour and swallow up” the “handful of negrophilist Union-haters.”  We have great faith in the capacity of the American people, yet we somewhat doubt whether any one of them could swallow up what he had already devoured, unless, indeed, he performed that feat which has hitherto been the opprobrium of Jack-puddings, and jumped down his own throat afterwards.  However, a man of Mr. Cushing’s warmth of nature might well find himself carried beyond the regions of ordinary rhetoric in contemplating so beautiful and affecting a vision, and it is enough that we have the consolation of knowing that he either spoke with a disregard of the census, which we cannot believe possible in one so remarkable for accuracy of statement, or that he acquits every man, woman, and child in the country of any hostility to the Union.  It is cheering to have this matter set finally at rest by so eminent an authority, and we are particularly glad that the necessity for so painful an experiment in swallowing