In national as well as in individual affairs, it is well to occasionally take an exact account of the situation in which we are; to balance “our general books,” to see whether the balance is to the “debit or credit” or “profit and loss,” and to decide from the results obtained whether satisfactory progress has been made. As nothing more than “a journal” of such affairs as we shall take into the account has been kept, it will be our duty to “post” these affairs into a new “ledger” from existing “journals,” and also to enter up the new balances which we may find standing to the several accounts. At no time since the close of the Revolutionary War has there been a time more fitting and inviting for such a work. The whole world is in a ferment, which was begun by the terrific strife into which the course of events forced us, and from which we have just emerged through the reconstruction of an almost demolished Governmental structure. Not all of the legitimate results of that strife are even yet externally apparent, either in our own country or in the world at large. There are various undercurrents, eddies and outcroppings which have never been taken into any consideration; but when considered, the destiny of this country, so long foreshadowed, but which was pretty nearly eclipsed, shines forth more clearly brilliant than ever before. Whatever may have been the arguments favorable for the continuance of the institution of slavery, the destruction of it has rendered them nugatory, and but few of those who once used them could now be found to favor its resurrection. The atmosphere is cleared of the cloud it was draped with, under its influence, and the radiant sun of freedom now shines for all, and the star of hope our night was illumined by shall now no more be dimmed by the dense fogs that were wont to arise from its then already decaying carcass. With its destruction the lives of two great political parties passed away, and left the people with no distinct lines of demarkation. It is true that there bodies still exist, but the process of disintegration is rapidly going on, and the stench of their decay fills the nostrils of all whose senses are rendered acute by the intensifying power of intuitive perception. Creation is from one point toward one purpose, the extremes of which course, are beyond the comprehension of human ken. Any fact in the line of its progress may be considered, and the relations it bears to contemporaneous facts determined. A fact isolated from all connections loses its significance. The comparison of a fact with other facts forms the basis of all relative knowledge, and the further this comparison is extended, the wider the range of this knowledge becomes: while an infinite series of facts constitutes the sum total of creation.