In point of fact, their real unhappiness arises from their impunity.
They are gasping for a substantial grievance. Their highest ambition is
to become political martyrs. Now and then one of them, like
Vallandigham, deliberately transcends the bounds of a wise forbearance,
and receives from the Government a very mild rebuke. Straightway he is
placed on the bad eminence to which he has so long aspired. Already dead
to all feeling of patriotism, he is canonized for his crimes, with rites
and ceremonies appropriate to such a priesthood. And, unhappily, he
finds but too many followers weak enough or wicked enough to recognize
his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he
resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the
fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the
hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he
is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the
hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he
represents, but the country which he has dishonored.
That such political monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a
time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of
degradation we were drifting when this war began.
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