Hard as the situation was made for common folks, they endured it patiently, grimly, convinced that there was no other way to end the war. There has never been seen, indeed, in the world’s history, a more splendid courage in bearing burdens than the people of the United States—North and South—showed in the Civil War. It is an inspiring thing to study. If it had had no reverse! But it is one of the curious and puzzling phenomena of human nature that the situation which inspires some to their highest endeavor arouses others to their lowest. That the same cause makes martyrs of some men, cormorants of others. If a war for a great cause brings out the nobler qualities of human nature, it brings out at the same time the vicious. If fine fellows march in the line and go bravely into battle, mean ones hang on their flanks and rob the battlefield. If the mass of people pay the cost by the sweat of their brow, a minority trades on their necessity. Never have we had this violent contrast more marked than in the Civil War. Take the attitude of the people towards the taxes and tariff. The mass bore the burdens imposed without a whimper, yet from the first there was a large number whose sole aim was to manipulate taxes and tariff to serve their interests. They ignored the principles the makers of the bills laid down clearly, that everything was to have a duty put on it which could be made to yield revenue. The consumers of raw materials fought fiercely for free wool, free cocoa, free everything, and they fought as hard for increased duties on their products; not satisfied that these duties compensate for internal taxes, they wanted them higher than the taxes. The government was the best patron of importers and manufacturers, and it was a customer not too careful that it got what it bargained for, such was the stress of its situation, and these manufacturers and importers cheated their great patron at every turn. They gave shoddy for wool, adulterated the food they sold, undercounted and underweighed. Frequently what they sold had been smuggled in, for smuggling flourished abundantly under the high duties. All that free traders had ever said of the inducement the protective system gave for cheating the government was more than proved true. An organized system of smuggling from Canada was in operation before the end of 1862, and it grew steadily throughout the war until it was an open secret that the markets of Boston particularly were full of smuggled goods. The closest watch had to be kept for this reason, on every attempt to put a duty on an article hitherto free. Thus in 1864 Mr. Fessenden stopped a proposed tariff on spices. He had discovered, he said, that the gentlemen who imported spices had already on hand in warehouses a great quantity held for the higher prices which the duty would cause, and that full preparations had been made to keep up this supply by smuggling from Canada—an easy thing