The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
distinctions will be made by a magistrate who is in the habit of denying
indisputable facts with the fury of a pugilist who has received a
personal affront, and of announcing demonstrated fallacies with the
imperturbable serenity of a philosopher proclaiming the fundamental laws
of human belief. His brain is entirely ridden by his will, and of all
the public men in the country its official head is the one whose opinion
carries with it the least intellectual weight. It is to the credit of
our institutions and our statesmen that the man least qualified by
largeness of mind and moderation of temper to exercise uncontrolled
power should be the man who aspired to usurp it. The constitutional
instinct in the blood, and the constitutional principle in the brain, of
our real statesmen, preserve them from the folly and guilt of setting
themselves up as imitative Caesars and Napoleons, the moment they are
trusted with a little delegated power.
Still we are told, that, with all his defects, Andrew Johnson is to be
honored and supported as a "conservative" President engaged in a contest
with a "radical" Congress! It happens, however, that the two persons who
specially represent Congress in this struggle are Senators Trumbull and
Fessenden. Senator Trumbull is the author of the two important measures
which the President vetoed; Senator Fessenden is the chairman and organ
of the Committee of Fifteen which the President anathematizes. Now we
desire to do justice to the gravity of face which the partisans of Mr.
Johnson preserve in announcing their most absurd propositions, and
especially do we commend their command of countenance while it is their
privilege to contrast the wild notions and violent speech of such
lawless radicals as the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from
Maine, with the balanced judgment and moderate temper of such a pattern
conservative as the President of the United States. The contrast prompts
ideas so irresistibly ludicrous, that to keep one's risibilities under
austere control while instituting it argues a self-command almost
miraculous.
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