The one great issue between the Radicals and the Democrats since the conclusion of the war is this: the “Democracy” deny that the readmission to Congress of the representatives of the Southern States is a matter of expediency at all; to them they declare that it is a matter of right. There was a rebellion in certain States which temporarily prevented their sending representatives; it is over, and their men must come. Either the Union is or is not dissolved; the Radicals admit that it is not, that all their endeavors were to prevent the Union being destroyed by rebels, and that they succeeded in so doing. The States, as States, were never in rebellion; there was only a powerful rebellion localized in certain States. “If you admit, then,” say the Democrats, “that the Union is not dissolved, how can you govern a number of States by major-generals?” Meanwhile the Radicals go on, not wasting their time in words, but passing through the House and over the President‘s veto the legislation necessary for the reconstruction of free government--with their illogical, but thoroughly English, good sense, avoiding all talk about constitutions that are obsolete, and laws that it is impossible to enforce, and pressing on steadily to the end that they have in view: equal rights for all men, free government as soon as may be. The one thing to regret is, that the Republicans have not the courage to appeal to the national exigencies merely, but that their leaders are forced by public opinion to keep up the sham of constitutionalism. No one in America seems to dream that there can be anything to alter in the “matchless Constitution,” which was framed by a body of slaveowners filled with the narrowest aristocratic prejudices, for a country which has since abolished slavery, and become as democratic as any nation in the world.