The other proverb has its voice also, saying plainly, Follow common sense, and do not, while escaping one danger, rush upon another. You are now escaping from the whirlpool of war, which has threatened to absorb and ingulf the Republic. Do not rush upon the opposite terror, where another shipwreck of a different kind awaits you, while Sirens tempt with their "song of death." Take warning: _Seeking to escape from Charybdis, do not rush upon Scylla_. Alas! the Scylla on which our Republic is now driving is that old rock of _concession and compromise_ which from the beginning of our history has been a constant peril. It appeared in the convention which framed the National Constitution, and ever afterwards, from year to year, showed itself in Congress, until at last the Oligarchy, nursed by our indulgence, rebelled. And now that the war is over, it is proposed to invest this same Rebel Oligarchy with a new lease of immense power, involving the control over loyal citizens, whose fidelity to the Republic has been beyond question. Here, too, are Sirens, in the shape of belligerent traitors, suing softly that the Republic may be lured to the old concession and compromise. _Alas! that, escaping from Charybdis, we should rush upon Scylla!_ The old Oligarchy conducted all its operations in the name of State Rights, and in this name it rebelled. And when the Republic sought to suppress the Rebellion, it was replied, that a State could not be coerced. Now that the Rebellion is overthrown, and a just effort is made to obtain that "security for the future" without which the war will have been in vain, the same cry of State Rights is raised, and we are told again that a State cannot be coerced,--as if the same mighty power which directed armies upon the Rebellion could be impotent to exact all needful safeguards. It was to overcome these pretensions, and stamp _E Pluribus Unum_ upon the Republic, that we battled in war; and now we surrender to these tyrannical pretensions again. Escaping from war, we rush upon the opposite peril,--_as from Charybdis to Scylla_. Again, we are told gravely, that the national power which decreed emancipation cannot maintain it by assuring universal enfranchisement, because an imperial government must be discountenanced,--as if the whole suggestion of "imperialism" or "centralism" were not out of place, until the national security is established, and our debts, whether to the national freedman or the national creditor, are placed where they cannot be repudiated. A phantom is created, and, to avoid this phantom, we rush towards concession and compromise,--_as from Charybdis to Scylla_.