But Of A Sudden Jones And
His Wife Have Fallen Out, And There Is For Awhile In Jones Hall A
Cat-And-Dog Life That May End - In One Hardly Dare To Surmise What
Calamity.
Mrs. Jones begs that I will interfere with her husband,
and Jones entreats the good offices of my wife in moderating the
hot temper of his own.
But we know better than that. If we
interfere, the chances are that my dear friends will make it up and
turn upon us. I grieve beyond measure in a general way at the
temporary break up of the Jones-Hall happiness. I express general
wishes that it may be temporary. But as for saying which is right
or which is wrong - as to expressing special sympathy on either side
in such a quarrel - it is out of the question. "My dear Jones, you
must excuse me. Any news in the city to-day? Sugars have fallen;
how are teas?" Of course Jones thinks that I'm a brute; but what
can I do?
I have been somewhat surprised to find the trouble that has been
taken by American orators, statesmen, and logicians to prove that
this secession on the part of the South has been revolutionary -
that is to say, that it has been undertaken and carried on not in
compliance with the Constitution of the United States, but in
defiance of it. This has been done over and over again by some of
the greatest men of the North, and has been done most successfully.
But what then? Of course the movement has been revolutionary and
anti-constitutional. Nobody, no single Southerner, can really
believe that the Constitution of the United States as framed in
1787, or altered since, intended to give to the separate States the
power of seceding as they pleased. It is surely useless going
through long arguments to prove this, seeing that it is absolutely
proved by the absence of any clause giving such license to the
separate States. Such license would have been destructive to the
very idea of a great nationality. Where would New England have
been, as a part of the United States, if New York, which stretches
from the Atlantic to the borders of Canada, had been endowed with
the power of cutting off the six Northern States from the rest of
the Union? No one will for a moment doubt that the movement was
revolutionary, and yet infinite pains are taken to prove a fact
that is patent to every one.
It is revolutionary; but what then? Have the Northern States of
the American Union taken upon themselves, in 1861, to proclaim
their opinion that revolution is a sin? Are they going back to the
divine right of any sovereignty? Are they going to tell the world
that a nation or a people is bound to remain in any political
status because that status is the recognized form of government
under which such a people have lived? Is this to be the doctrine
of United States citizens - of all people?
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