legislates," and the time had now come when nothing else could break the spell of irresolution and blindness which threatened the Union even more seriously than armed treason itself. Notwithstanding this strange epoch of Republican feebleness and indecision, the warfare against Mr. Buchanan was never intermitted. It had been prosecuted with constantly increasing vigor since the year 1856, and had now become so perfectly relentless and overwhelming that he was totally submerged by the waves of popular wrath; and for twenty odd years no political resurrection has been thought possible. Although his personal integrity was as unquestionable as that of John C. Calhoun or George III, and his private life as stainless, yet his public character has received no quarter from his enemies and but little defense from his friends. One of his most formidable critics, writing long years after the war, describes him as "hungry for regard, influence, and honor, but too diminutive in intellect and character to feel the glow of true ambition--a man made, so to speak, to be neither loved nor hated, esteemed nor despised, slighted nor admired; intended to play an influential part in the agitation of parties, and by history to be silently numbered with the dead, because in all his doings there was not a single deed; a man to whom fate could do nothing worse than place him at the helm in an eventful period." While there is a measure of truth in this picture, I believe any fair-minded man will pronounce it over-drawn, one-sided, and unjust, after reading the recently published life of Mr. Buchanan by George Ticknor Curtis, dealing fully with his entire public career in the clear, cold light of historic facts. The most pronounced political foe of Mr. Buchanan can not go over the pages of this elaborate and long-delayed defense without modifying some of his most decided opinions; but one thing remains obviously true, and that is in dealing with the question of slavery Mr. Buchanan was wholly without a conscience. The thought seems never to have dawned upon him that the slave was a man, and therefore entitled to his natural rights. In a public speech on the ninth of July, 1860, defining his position, and referring to the Dred Scott decision, he says: "It is to me the most extraordinary thing in the world that this country should now be distracted and divided because certain persons at the North will not agree that their brethren at the South should have the same rights in the Territories which they enjoy. What would I, as a Pennsylvanian, say or do, supposing any one was to contend that the Legislature of any Territory could outlaw iron or coal within the Territory? The principle is precisely the same. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided, what was known to us all to have been the existing state of affairs for fifty years, that slaves are property. Admit that fact, and you admit everything."