The present insurrection has been so long meditated, the approaches to its final consummation have been so steadily made, and the schemes of the principal traitors have been so well planned and carefully matured, that they have almost succeeded in making the vocabulary of treason a part of the vernacular of the country.  We all talk of the States which have seceded or are going to secede,—­of a fratricidal war,—­of the measures which this or the other State is determined or likely to adopt; and a great deal has been said about State sovereignty, and coercion of a State, and the invasion of the soil of one State and another.  There has been large discussion in times past of the danger of a dissolution of the Union.  Indeed, this danger has been so often held up as a threat by one section, and so persistently used as a scarecrow by timid or profligate men in the other, that it has become one of the commonplaces of political contests.  Our ears have hardly ceased to be tormented with projects of reconstruction, and with suggestions of guaranties, and pacifications, and mediation, and neutrality, armed or otherwise.  Border-State Conventions are projected, and well-meaning governors have been arranging interviews or conducting correspondence with governors who talked of Southern rights, and undertook to say what their States would or would not permit the United States Government to do.  Even a Cabinet officer, of whom better things might have been expected, and by whom better things are now nobly said and done, allowed himself to fall into the error of explaining to the vacillating Governor of Maryland that the intentions of the National Administration were purely defensive.  While such language is current at home, it is not strange that foreigners should find themselves in a state of hopeless confusion about us.  Few European writers, except De Tocqueville, have ever shown a clear comprehension of our political system; and the speeches of British statesmen on American affairs are perhaps rather to be accounted for and excused from want of information, than resented as hostile or insulting.  But it is time that this whole pernicious dialect should be exploded, and the ideas which it represents be eradicated from the minds of intelligent men everywhere.

The right of revolution it is needless to discuss.  Resistance, in any practicable method, to intolerable oppression, is the natural right of every human being, and of course of every community.  But such a right is never included in the framework of organized civil society.  From its nature, it can form no part of a plan of government.  The only formula which embraces it is the famous one of “Monarchy tempered by Regicide”; and where that prevails, it seems to be adopted as a practical expedient, rather than recognized as an established constitutional maxim.  But as a question of revolution the issue is not presented.  If it were, it would be easy to deal with.  The only embarrassment in our present condition, so far as reasoning goes, arises from confused notions of constitutional law, and the inaccuracy of language which necessarily attends them.  In order, therefore, to know what is before us, let us first see where we stand.