But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. The people have found out that the foe _can not_ be gently whipped and amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid. And if the South goes, _all_ may possibly go. In every city exist desperate and unprincipled men--the FERNANDO WOODS of the dangerous classes--who to rule would do all in their power to break our remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would flood us with smuggled European goods--for, be it remembered, this iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent on their programme--our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined, and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they once were. The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as 'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days these to fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing, even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been merciful--we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the fiendish-hearted women of Secessia--and what have we got by it? Lies and lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops, for _not_ taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance! The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville _Courier_, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an article which has been of late more than once closely reechoed and imitated by the Richmond _Whig_. 'This,' says the _Courier_, 'has been called a fratricidal war by some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery question is merely the _pretext, not the cause of the war_. The true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between the two races engaged.