fall to the ground, and lie a helpless, hopeless ruin on the very threshold of the temple where it lately stood defiant and dominant. Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate the causes of this disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any one of the Northern victims of this cruel outrage have exclaimed, in the language of Balaam's long-eared servant, "Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto to this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee?" And the modern, like the ancient Balaam, must have answered, "Nay." But, alas for Northern manhood, alas for human nature corrupted by long possession of political power, after a short-lived, though, let us hope, sincere outburst of indignation, followed by protests and remonstrances, growing daily milder and more moderate, the Northern Democracy now begs permission to return once more to its former servitude, and would gladly peril the permanence of the Union, to hug again the fetters which it has so patiently and so profitably worn. Lay aside party prejudice, for one moment, my dear Andrew, and tell me if the world ever saw a more humiliating spectacle. Slighted, spurned, spit upon by their ancient allies, compelled to bear the odium of an aggressive and offensive pro-slavery policy, tamely consenting to a denial of the dearest human rights and the plainest principles of natural justice, rewarded only by a share in the Federal offices, and punished by the contempt of all who, at home or abroad, intelligently and unselfishly studied the problem of our republican institutions, the Northern Democracy found themselves, at the most critical period of our national history, abandoned by the masters whom they had faithfully served, and whom many were willing to follow to a depth of degradation which could have no lower deep. And yet, when thus freed from their long slavery by the voluntary act of their oppressors, we hear them to-day clamoring for the privilege of wearing anew the accustomed yoke, and feeling again the familiar lash! Are these white men, with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed