A _proclamation_ like this address would have been infamous. Here is where the mistake was made in the criticisms heaped upon it. His official acts were all such as became the Chief Magistrate of New York. The speech, therefore, must be judged rather by the rules of taste and propriety, than, by those which apply to him officially. If a man's official acts are all right, it is unjust to let them go for nothing, and bring into prominence a short address made without premeditation in the front of an excited, promiscuous assembly, moved by different motives. That it was open to criticism in some respects, is true. It should have been imbued more with the spirit of determination to maintain order and suppress violence, and less been said of the measures that had or would be taken to test the constitutionality of the draft, and of his purpose, if it were decided in the courts to be wrong, to oppose it. Such talk had better be deferred till after order is restored. When men begin to burn and plunder dwellings, attack station-houses, hang negroes, and shoot down policemen, it is too late to attempt to restore peace by talking about the constitutionality of laws. The upholding of laws about the constitutionality of which there is no doubt, is the only thing deserving of consideration. The Common Council of the city exhibited in this respect a most pusillanimous spirit, by offering resolutions to have the constitutionality of the law tested, when, the entire constitution and laws of the State were being subverted! Unquestionably, some charity should be extended to men who are pleading for those whose votes elevated them to office. Brutuses are rare nowadays; and politicians do not like to shoot down their own voters--they would much rather make more voters out of men no more fit to exercise the right of suffrage than horses and mules. Governed by a similar spirit, Archbishop Hughes, although he had yielded to the pressure made on him and issued an address to the Irish, calling on them to abstain from violence, yet accompanied it with a letter to Horace Grreeley, directly calculated to awaken or intensify, rather than allay their passions. He more than intimated that they had been abused and oppressed, and thought it high time the war was ended. The proclamation was short, but the letter was a long one, full of a vindictive spirit, and showing unmistakably with whom his sympathies were.