no one will be compelled to pay until it can be shown that every other one will be compelled to pay in precisely the same proportion according to value; nay, even it will be a dead letter if no one can be compelled to pay until it is certain that every other one will pay at all. . . .  This sort of difficulty applies in full force to the practical administration of the draft law.  In fact, the difficulty is greater in the case of the draft law”; and he proceeded to state the difficulties.  “In all these points,” he continued, “errors will occur in spite of the utmost fidelity.  The Government is bound to administer the law with such an approach to exactness as is usual in analogous cases, and as entire good faith and fidelity will reach.”  Errors, capable of correction, should, he promised, be corrected when pointed out; but he concluded:  “With these views and on these principles, I feel bound to tell you it is my purpose to see the draft law faithfully executed.”  It was his way, as has been seen, sometimes to set his thoughts very plainly on paper and to consider afterwards the wisdom of publishing them.  This paper never saw the light till after his death.  It is said that some scruple as to the custom in his office restrained him from sending it out, but this scruple probably weighed with him the more because he saw that the sincere people whom he had thought of addressing needed no such appeal.  It was surely a wise man who, writing so wisely, could see the greater wisdom of silence.

The opposition to the Conscription Law may be treated simply as one element in the propaganda of the official Opposition to the Administration.  The opposition to such a measure which we might possibly have expected to arise from churches, or from schools of thought independent of the ordinary parties, does not seem, as a matter of fact, to have arisen.  The Democratic party had, as we have seen, revived in force in the latter part of 1862.  Persons, ambitious, from whatever mixture of motives, of figuring as leaders of opposition during a war which they did not condemn, found a public to which to appeal, mainly because the war was not going well.  They found a principle of opposition satisfactory to themselves in condemning the Proclamation of Emancipation. (It was significant that McClellan shortly after the Proclamation issued a General Order enjoining obedience to the Government and adding the hint that “the remedy for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls.”) In the curious creed which respectable men, with whom allegiance to an ancient party could be a powerful motive at such a time, were driven to construct for themselves, enforcement of the duty to defend the country and liberation of the enemy’s slaves appeared as twin offences against the sacred principles of constitutional freedom.  It would have been monstrous to say that most of the Democrats were opposed to the war.  Though a considerable number had