the equilibria of the government portends the violent upheaval of ground considered secure, threatens the disruption of all constitutional ties, and may ultimately lead to the overthrow of constitutional liberty in America.
No lover of "liberty regulated by law" can observe without alarm the stealthy approach of this revolutionary spirit, however it may be masked. If freedom is to survive, the fortress of constitutional liberty must be proof against the peril of infection within, as well as impregnable to the assaults of foes with out. If the love of civic liberty be interwoven with every fibre of the American heart, if equality of right by due process of law is the birthright of every American citizen, then this eternal principle of right should be guarded by an ever-wakeful vigilance. Constructions subversive of the spirit of this great freedom may have the specious appearance of a rigid execution of justice, but they are in reality more to be dreaded than that violent seizure of right which threatens open-handed destruction by bloody insurrection.
In by-gone years, the "great northern confederacy," the Hartford-convention rebels, and the alien-and-sedition malcontents of 1798 in Virginia; later on, Dorr's Rhode Islanders, South-Carolina Nullifiers, Slaveryites, King Cotton, Secession, and Rebellion struggled for royal supremacy over this sacred principle. Those discarded ancient and modern potentates, small and great, each in their turn have been urned in that sepulchre of time which has buried every error, covered every defect, extinguished every resentment, but traced no epitaph upon their tomb. Their fell spirits have now reappeared in formidable shape; and to-day it may be fittingly asked, "Under what King Bezonian" shall our sociological development be marshalled? to what coronet shall the Constitution we have crowned, bend and bow? If the assertion of power unlimited by law be indicatory of the future exercise of supreme authority, then the womb of America is teeming with a mighty brood of embryo kings. Shall the Electoral-Political Balance of Power, with its newly intrusted sceptre, whether Republican or Democratic, wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of yesterday's vote, be anointed and declared the rightful heir, and with its strong right hand pluck
