7 DECEMBER 1867, Page 5

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S Message to Congress, the last but one that he will ever transmit, will give the finishing stroke to his reputation as a statesman. No man in our time ever had such opportunities, and no man has ever thrown them away so persistently. On the miserable day when, amidst the heartfelt grief of a nation, he was called by the Constitution to power, the people of the United States were ready to accept. any guidance which would conform to certain conditions, indeed, to one single condition. Utterly prostrated by the war, the South asked only that the terms of submission should be made clear and final, was prepared, as one orator pithily expressed it, "to swear she had never seen a slave." Excited by a war of four years, alarmed by the burdens they had imposed upon themselves, unaccustomed to look to Congress for guidance, the Northern people would gladly have followed their President, if only certain that he was resolved to estab- lish freedom of labour, to abolish the oppression which had so nearly torn the country in twain. If he had once complied with this condition, Mr. Johnson might have declared the Con- stitution art inspired document,—as he has done repeatedly,— or himself a Moses,—as he did once,—or the only national Representative, — as he is always doing, — without in any degree impairing his substantial leadership. Instead of this, he declared for "State Rights," that is, for the right of the South to reverse the decision of the sword, and for two long years he has compelled the representatives of the people to de- vote half their strength to paralyzing his legal authority. His policy has been overthrown, his patronage taken away, his tenure of office menaced by threats of legal violence, and still his only remedy has been to exasperate the nation by declaring its Legis- lature an usurping body, and itself blinded by wicked fools. At last, his friends compelled him to be quiet, and after some months of comparative moderation a second chance was given him. The Republican party, partly through its violence, partly through its devotion to certain religious ideas, but chiefly through its failure to produce leaders, lost its ascendancy, and the electors began to return men able, as far as their party faith was concerned, to follow Mr. Johnson. It was open to the President to avail himself of the reaction, to carry out many of his ideas while pardoning all his enemies, and by studied moderation of language to pave the way for the reconciliation of all moderate men throughout the States in support of his policy. He had only, for example, to pronounce against Negro suffrage, except when justified by education, and in favour of direct constitutional guarantees for the Negroes' civil rights, and he would have carried South 'and North alike far onwards to the point where hearty reconciliation will become possible, would have cooled all personal hatreds, and would have restored at once the authority of his great office: In place of any such plan, he has sent to Congress a Message which breathes only party exultation and official defiance. He throws all the blame of the situation boldly on Congress. "The expectation of an easy restoration of the Union has been disappointed by Congres- sional legislation. No Union exists as our fathers' understood it,"—but he still hopes for a settlement in accordance with the Constitution. In other words, he still hopes and still intends that, despite the folly of Congress, the doctrine of State Rights, which produced the war, and which, if accepted, would undo its results, will again become a dogma with the American people. Each State in the South, reintroduced as it was when it quitted the Union, is to have power to govern its Black population as it pleases, subject only to two conditions,—that the South must rule instead of quitting the Union, and that it must not openly re-establish slavery. The war is to be for- gotten, and every result of it cancelled, except indeed the Debt. This is what Mr. Johnson means by the "Union as known to our fathers," and to show still more distinctly that he has not moderated his opinions, that he regards the acts of Congress as follies and Congress itself as an enemy, he calls on the two Houses to abolish the Reconstruction Acts, as producing a military rule likely to end in bankruptcy—they have ended so far in a surplus of eleven millions sterling—and threatens if a certain Act is passed to create a civil war. His words are, "If Congress should pass an Act, even through all the forms of law, to abolish a co-ordinate department of the Government of the country, the President must take the high responsibility of his office to save the life of the nation at all hazard." The meaning of that is, that the Judiciary Committee having reported in favour of impeachment, Mr. Johnson is afraid of an Act suspending officers under that process during their trial ; and even if such Act appears to be legal, or is passed, as he says, with all the forms of law, he will resist it at any hazard. The "life of the nation" is bound up, in his judgment, with the continuance of his authority. What more could a King say, or how would Stuart, or Bourbon, or Hapsburg have expressed a more inflexible determination to resist the national will? As a matter of fact, we believe that Congress has power under the Constitu- tion to make rules for the trial of impeached officers ; indeed, how else could an armed President be compelled to appear as defendant, though this particular exercise of the power was possibly never contemplated ?—but that is a minor question.

The main fact is, that Mr. Johnson threatens to meet an Act of the supreme Legislature by a coup d'e'tat, to employ military force against the representatives of the people, whose authority in matters of legislation is distinctly placed by the Constitu- tion above his own. He has no troops to rely on except the Southern Militia, and his menace, therefore, really involves either a submission of the North to the South, or a renewal of the war, under new conditions, and in a far more dangerous, because more universally diffused, form. It would be a war, not of State against State, but of village against village.

Unless we greatly mistake the American people, these words, deliberately recorded by the Chief of the State, will at once undo all the work of the elections, reinvigorate and recom- bine the Republican party, and perhaps drive Congress to immediate and most regrettable action. No nation suffers so keenly under verbal insult as the American, and it is insult which Mr. Johnson pours upon his opponents. The Union, the ideal of the nation, for which they have shed their blood and spent their treasure, "does not," he says, "exist," and does not exist through their fault, or rather their misconduct in legislation. What taunt addressed to a Legislature could be more galling, or more likely to drive them to reckless action?

Anglo-Saxons, again, it has been often said, to become utterly reckless need the stimulus of a little fear, and this also Mr.

Johnson, in his scarcely veiled menace of resistance to law, does not hesitate to supply. The very first act in such resistance must be the arrest or dispersion of the Members, who would almost be justified even now in calling up militia from the North to protect their sittings. Fortunately, there is a fund of common sense in the average American mind, a steady disbelief in coups d'itat, a persistent confidence that things which are will also continue to be, which at once dis- inclines them for extreme courses and protects them from extreme fears, and Congress will probably go on steadily, unsparred, as undeterred, by all this "tall talk." But its tone will, we doubt not, be more confident, its decisions swifter, its action more determined, while the great party on which it rests will receive hourly new recruits. For thefirst time, impeachment has become probable, and even if impeach- ment is avoided, Congress will certainly not pause in its own view of Reconstruction. If the President, with no party in Congress at his back, threatens resistance to the law, what would he not do with the South and the Democrats behind him ?

The remainder of the Message is so overshadowed by the importance of its opening sentences, that the paragraphs appear scarcely worth discussing until the Message itself has arrived. It is tolerably clear, however, that the President denounces payment of the national debt in " currency " or inconvertible paper, that he has made a financial statement of some kind not given in the telegram, and that he has made a proposal which, as described, is one of the most extraordinary kind. Mr. Johnson has recommended Congress to declare "that the naturalization of a foreigner as a citizen of the United States absolves the recipient from allegiance to the Sovereign of his native country." The proposal, we imagine, is made in the interest mainly of the Germans, who are now liable to be arrested on their return home for non-compliance with military regulations ; and of the Fenians, who want to be able to compel Mr. Adams to watch the proceedings against; them. Americans are, of course, just as liable to the law for offences committed in England as Irishmen ; but the Fenians. naturally think the direct protection of a powerful State' would greatly facilitate their plans. Be the motive, however,. what it may, the proposal to upset an international law at least eight hundred years old by municipal legislation, to override Europe by an Act of Congress, can have been made only with one end—to secure its rejection, and thus enable- the President to say to all Germans and Irishmen, It is not to me, but to Congress, that your grievances are due.'