of the other seven parties to the arrangement of 1815.  That all those parties to that arrangement were not always indifferent to their guaranty appears from the opposition made by Russia, France, and England to Prince Schwarzenburg’s proposition, that Austria should be allowed to introduce all her non-Germanic territories into the Confederation, that is to say, that the Austrian Empire, which then included the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, should become a part of Germany, which it would soon have ruled, as well as overruled, while it would have extended its dominion over Italy.  Had Schwarzenburg’s project succeeded, the course of European events during the last sixteen years must have been entirely changed, or Austria would have been made too strong to be harmed by the French in Italy, or by the Prussians in Germany and Bohemia.  Russia was specially adverse to that project; and the Treaty of Vienna was forcibly appealed to by her government in opposing it.  The time had not then come for making waste-paper of the arrangements of 1815.

* * * * *

RECONSTRUCTION.

The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent.  There are the best of reasons for this profound interest.  Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this.  No political skirmishing will avail.  The occasion demands statesmanship.

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—­a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—­a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—­an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—­an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.  The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions.  The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the