There are those who profess to fear that our government is becoming a mere irresponsible tyranny.  If there are any who really believe that our present Chief Magistrate means to found a dynasty for himself and family, that a coup d’etat is in preparation by which he is to become Abraham, DEI GRATIA Rex,—­they cannot have duly pondered his letter of June 12th, in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a rustic lover called upon by an anxious parent to explain his intentions.  The force of his argument is not at all injured by the homeliness of his illustrations.  The American people are not much afraid that their liberties will be usurped.  An army of legislators is not very likely to throw away its political privileges, and the idea of a despotism resting on an open ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the waves of Boston Harbor.  We know pretty well how much of sincerity there is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found in company with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the nation.  We have learned to put a true value on the services of the watch-dog who bays the moon, but does not bite the thief!

The men who are so busy holy-stoning the quarterdeck, while all hands are wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it that would be very unsightly in fair weather.  No thoroughly loyal man, however, need suffer from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as emergencies always give rise to.  If any half-loyal man forgets his code of half-decencies and half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the peremptory justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres of conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers who are risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more satisfaction than when an avowed traitor is caught and punished.  For of all men who are loathed by generous natures, such as fill the ranks of the armies of the Union, none are so thoroughly loathed as the men who contrive to keep just within the limits of the law, while their whole conduct provokes others to break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping an inch short of treason, and whose political morality has for its safeguard a just respect for the jailer and the hangman!  The simple preventive against all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war.  When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to.  When it comes from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it deserves.  Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs which demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing the essential principle of