sentiments. They reserve all their indignation for the moderate repression which our Administration has seen fit, in some cases, to apply to traitorous utterances. They have even risen to the sublime impudence of denouncing it as a monstrous outrage on the constitutional rights of Northern traitors, that our Government has declined, in a few instances, to allow the United States mail to be the agent for transporting and circulating treasonable newspapers. I have quite lately been edified with the tone of lofty, indignant scorn with which one of these papers—published in the city of New-York—cries shame on the Government for refusing to be its carrier; though no man knows better than the editor that a publication at the South as much in sympathy with the Union as his is with the rebellion, would not only not get carried in the rebel mails, but, before twenty-four hours, would be suppressed, and its editor in prison, or more probably hung, by the direction or with the approbation of the rebel authorities; and in such a case, our New-York editor would not have space for a line to chronicle the fact, or for a word to denounce it to Northern indignation. But for our Government to decline carrying his treasonable sheet—that is monstrous! Behold him, a confessor in the sacred cause of freedom of speech and of the press! He will not succumb to unconstitutional tyranny! He will continue to print in spite of Government, and to send his treason through the land by the express companies, until the millennial day of the restoration of 'the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was!'

The men who utter this phrase talk, too, about the constitutional rights of the rebels—just as if those who are waging war for the overthrow of the Constitution had any rights under it! Such talk is an outrage on common-sense and decency. What constitutional rights have rebels in arms to any thing, but to be fairly tried for treason, to the forfeiture of their lives, if they escape merited death on the battle-field?

These out-criers for the Constitution and the Union strive also to confuse the public mind with constitutional questions as to the end or purpose of the war. What has the Constitution to do with that? What constitutional object is there for the nation or the Government to have now in view? This, and this only: the extinction of the rebellion by force of arms. Conventions, negotiations, concessions to rebels in arms—even if they were in arms for rights under the Constitution—would be utterly unconstitutional; much more are they so when the rebels are in arms not to vindicate constitutional rights, but for the overthrow of the Constitution, the destruction of the Government, and the dismemberment of the nation. They must lay down their arms in unconditional submission before they can be constitutionally treated with. Any other doctrine would be subversive of the Constitution, of the principles that lie at its basis, of the principles of all government, all national existence, and all social order.

The Government may be driven, by the victorious pressure of rebel arms, to the overwhelming necessity of treating with them. Necessity has no laws. But until then, to talk of treating with armed rebels is as treasonable as it is absurd. Until then, there is no other object allowed by the Constitution, no other obligation imposed by it on the Government, but the military subjugation of the rebellion. The Constitution gives the Government this power, and no other—puts upon it this duty, and no other.

And as to constitutional modes of conducting the war: are the men who raise questions, and suggest scruples, so stupid as not to know that, so far as the rebels are concerned, such a way of talking is the sheerest of all possible absurdities? The war power is a power conferred by the Constitution; but it is a power which, in face of an enemy, is above all other constitutional powers. In granting the war power to Government, the Constitution grants to it, without qualification or limitation, all the powers necessary and proper to carry on war; this, of course, even if there were no plain delegation of them. But there is; and the only laws which limit the constitutional powers of Government in the conduct of the war, are the laws of war. These laws lie outside of the Constitution, in the consent and recognition of civilized nations. They are now the supreme laws. All this, for the sufficient reason that the constitutional grant of the war power under any other limitation than the laws of war, would be idle and nugatory; and this for the sufficient reason that the salvation of the republic is that to which every thing else must be sacrificed. The constitutional guaranties of State and personal rights were framed for a condition of union, order, peace—not for one of secession, rebellion, and war. In such a time, they must all give way to the supreme necessity of saving the national existence. Constitution or no Constitution, the nation must not be destroyed. Who but a fool would question the right of a man to strike a dagger to the heart of the assassin whose grasp was on his throat, because there is a law against the private use of deadly weapons? The clutch of a parricidal rebellion is grappling at the national existence, and what shall we think of those men who would stay the arm of Government from stabbing at its vitals by interposing constitutional scruples? Even if the Constitution did stand in the way, who but a fool or a traitor would hesitate to go around it or over it to save the national existence? Salus reipublicæ suprema lex. Was the nation made for the Constitution, or the Constitution for the nation? If both can not stand together, which shall go down? Will you stick to the Constitution, and let the nation be destroyed? Any thing more insanely preposterous than such a putting of the wrong thing foremost, such a preference of the means to the end, is hard to be imagined.

But the Constitution does not stand in the way. Neither in letter nor in spirit does it interpose a feather's resistance to the most summary and effectual extinction of the rebellion. On the contrary, it justifies the use of all the means sanctioned by the laws of war. It justifies, and, if need be, demands, the receiving, employing, and arming of all the loyal inhabitants of the South held in slavery under local laws, whether by rebel or by loyal masters. What the former might think or say, need not be asked or cared for; and the latter can not, in loyalty, object to the taking of their slaves for the defence of the nation, if military reasons make it needful or wise to do it. If employed, these slaves must be freed, and their masters must receive compensation at the hands of Government. To this, if their loyalty be any thing but an empty name, they will consent. If the extinction of slavery should be the ultimate result, what then? Is slavery so sacred and beneficent, that a triumphant rebellion and a dismembered country are to be preferred to its extinction? The loyal people of the North—the great body of the nation—are getting tired of that conditional Unionism, that Border State loyalty, which makes a paramount regard to the interests of slavery the price of adhering to the national cause. Conditional Unionism—what sort of Unionism is that? Loyalty with a price—what is such loyalty worth? The very terms imply threats, and involve the assertion of the very principle of secession itself. To treat with it, to concede to it, is to admit the principle. It has already cost the country too dearly to be longer endured. Six hundred millions of dollars and a hundred thousand lives vainly sacrificed to the foolish policy, are enough. It helps the cause of rebellion, it paralyzes the arm of Government. The people have become sternly impatient of it. The sooner President Lincoln, in his quality of Commander-in-Chief, understands this, and makes the Border State Unionists understand that