A free society, politically, in which wealth and distinction were debarred to none, the aristocratic influences of slavery were the propitious inducements in the South, to the cultivation of that personal dignity which marks the refinement of rank, in contradistinction to the vulgar pretensions and affectation of a mere aristocracy of money. The patrician society of the South sought the noblest type of republicanism--regulated liberty--beyond the influence of ignorant and fanatical mobs, that perfect order which reposes securely upon virtue, intelligence, and interested attachment, which all human experience teaches are the only reliable safeguards of freedom. The noblest achievement of constitutional liberty would have been the realization of the Southern ideal of republicanism. The success and beneficence of such a government would have been in perfect accord with the philosophy of history. Every nation to which has been guaranteed a free constitution is indebted for its liberal features to its educated, patrician classes, while all the decayed republics of history owed their downfall to the corruption and excesses of an "unbridled Democracy." Of such a government, Jefferson Davis was the appropriately chosen head. An ardent republican, in the truest and noblest sense of that abused term, a foe to absolutism and radicalism in every shape, he was the noblest product of a conservatism in which the elements of distinction were ability, intelligence, refinement, and social position. When, added to this representative quality, are considered his splendid career of public service, and his varied talents, exemplified on almost every field of exertion, it must be conceded that no ruler was ever more worthily invited to the head of a nation, and assuredly none ever was invited with such unanimity of popular acclaim.