Practical as the President always is, he is sublimely practical in the Proclamation.  “Let us make good out of this evil as quickly as we can,” he says; “let peace bring in plenty as quickly as she can.”  To bring this about, he promises the strong arm of the nation to protect anything which shall show itself worth protecting, in the way of social institutions of republican liberty.  He does not ask, like a conqueror, for the keys of a capital.  He does not ask, like a Girondist, for the vote of a majority.  He knows, it is true, as all the world knows, that, if the vote of all the men of the South could ever be obtained, the majority would utterly overshadow the handful of gentry who have been lording it over white trash and black slaves together.  But the President has no wish to prolong martial law to that indefinite future when this handful of gentlemen shall let the majority of their own people pronounce upon their claims to rule them.  Waiving the requisitions of the theorists, and at the same time relieving himself from the necessity of employing military power a moment longer than is necessary, he announces, in advance, what will be his policy in extending protection to loyal governments formed in Rebel States.  If there can be found in any State enough righteous men willing to take the oath of allegiance and to sustain the nation in its determination for emancipation,—­if there can be found only enough to be counted up as the tenth part of those who voted in the election of 1860, though their State should have sinned like Gomorrah, even though its name should be South Carolina, they shall be permitted to reconstruct its government, and that government shall be recognized by the government of the nation.

It is true that this gift is vastly more than any of the Rebel States has any right to claim.  When the King of Oude rebels against England, he does not find, at the end of the war, that, because he is utterly defeated, things are to go on upon their old agreeable footing.  Rebellion is not, in its nature, one of those pretty plays of little children, which can stop when either party is tired, because he asks for it to stop, so gently that both parties shall walk on hand in hand till either has got breath enough to begin the game again.  If the nation were contending against real and permanent enemies, in reducing to order the States of the Confederacy, or if the national feeling towards the people of those States were the bitter feeling which their leaders profess towards our people, the nation would, of course, offer no such easy terms.  The nation would say, “When you threw off the Constitution, you did it for better for worse.  It guarantied to you your State governments.  You spurned the guaranty.  Let it be so.  Let the guaranty be withdrawn.  You cannot sustain them.  Let them go, then.  You have destroyed them.  And the nation governs you by proconsuls.”  But the nation has no such desire to deal harshly with these people.  The nation knows that more