On the 19th of June, however, a change has come over the spirit of the Secretary’s dream, leading him to retract even this visionary compromise. “What is now seen in this country,” he tells Mr Adams, “is the occurrence, by no means peculiar, but frequent in all countries, more frequent even in Great Britain than here, of an armed insurrection engaged in attempting to overthrow the regularly constituted and established Government. _There is, of course, the employment of force by the Government to suppress the insurrection_, as every other Government necessarily employs force in such cases. But these incidents by no means constitute a state of war impairing the sovereignty of the Government, creating belligerent sections, and entitling foreign States to intervene or to act as neutrals between them, or in any other way to cast off their lawful obligations to the nation thus for the moment disturbed. Any other principle than this would be to resolve government everywhere into a thing of accident and caprice, and ultimately all human society into a state of perpetual war.” Here the facts of the Union, founded on consent, and of the President’s acceptance of the dogma, together with the unfitness of the Federal system for the task of subjugation—a task proper to imperial or despotic governments—are suddenly lost sight of along with the benevolent scheme for calling on the misguided citizens to abandon their “bad enterprise,” and return within the fold of the Union; and this great, glorious, and free Government is driven to confess that its only alternative is the rude and barbarous one hitherto repudiated, of force, such as the most abject monarchy might adopt. To such complexion must even the most beneficent institutions come under the pressure of necessity. And this change of Mr Seward’s tone is contemporaneous with his observation of the sudden appearance of inflexible and enthusiastic resolve on the part of the people of the North to put down the Secession by military power.