Events have been gradually convincing them that the peril was actual and near.  They begin to see how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the weak policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at Revolution till they learn to think the coarse reality as easy and pretty as the vaudeville they have been acting.  They are fast coming to the conclusion that the list of grievances put forward by the secessionists is a sham and a pretence, the veil of a long-matured plot against republican institutions.  And it is time the traitors of the South should know that the Free States are becoming every day more united in sentiment and more earnest in resolve, and that, so soon as they are thoroughly satisfied that secession is something more than empty bluster, a public spirit will be aroused that will be content with no half-measures, and which no Executive, however unwilling, can resist.

The country is weary of being cheated with plays upon words.  The United States are a nation, and not a mass-meeting; theirs is a government, and not a caucus,—­a government that was meant to be capable, and is capable, of something more than the helpless please don’t of a village constable; they have executive and administrative officers that are not mere puppet-figures to go through the motions of an objectless activity, but arms and hands that become supple to do the will of the people so soon as that will becomes conscious and defines its purpose.  It is time that we turned up our definitions in some more trustworthy dictionary than that of avowed disunionists and their more dangerous because more timid and cunning accomplices.  Rebellion smells no sweeter because it is called Secession, nor does Order lose its divine precedence in human affairs because a knave may nickname it Coercion.  Secession means chaos, and Coercion the exercise of legitimate authority.  You cannot dignify the one nor degrade the other by any verbal charlatanism.  The best testimony to the virtue of coercion is the fact that no wrongdoer ever thought well of it.  The thief in jail, the mob-leader in the hands of the police, and the murderer on the drop will be unanimous in favor of this new heresy of the unconstitutionality of Constitutions, with its Newgate Calendar of confessors, martyrs, and saints.  Falstaff’s famous regiment would have volunteered to a man for its propagation or its defence.  Henceforth let every unsuccessful litigant have the right to pronounce the verdict of a jury sectional, and to quash all proceedings and retain the property in controversy by seceding from the court-room.  Let the planting of hemp be made penal, because it squints toward coercion.  Why, the first great Secessionist would doubtless have preferred to divide Heaven peaceably, would have been willing to send Commissioners, must have thought Michael’s proceedings injudicious, and could probably even now demonstrate the illegality of hell-fire to any five-year-old imp of average education and intelligence.  What a