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Roused, however, by the Convention's decree of November 19, which extended the succor of France to all people who should wish to recover their liberty, and charged the generals of the republic to make good the offer with the forces under their command, the ministry decided to abandon their guarded attitude; and their new resolution was confirmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputations from British revolutionary societies at the bar of the Convention, on which occasion the president of the latter affected to draw a dividing line between the British government and the British nation.
They clung unswervingly not only to the property theory, but advanced boldly to its logical sequence Congressional protection to slavery in the Territories. Of the convention's preliminary work little is worth recording there were the clamor and protest of contesting delegations and small fire of parliamentary skirmishes, by which factions feel and measure each other's strength.
What the legend attributes to Napoleon Buonaparte as his commentary on the conduct of King Louis at the Tuileries was to be the Convention's ideal now. The "man on horseback" and the hot fire of cannon were to carry the day. Both sides seemed loath to begin. But at half-past four in the afternoon it was clear that the decisive moment had come.
But how inferior are the Convention's Grands Jours to those of the Monarchy, and its Chambre Ardente to that of Louis XIV! The Revolutionary Tribunal is dominated by a sentiment of mean-spirited justice and common equality that will quickly make it odious and ridiculous and will disgust everybody.
"Let 'em yell;" counsels Mr. Billings, "and if they do nominate anybody nobody'll hear 'em. And send word to Putnam County to come along on their fifth ballot." It is Mr. Billings himself who sends word to Putnam County, in the name of the convention's chairman. Before the messenger can reach Putnam County another arrives on the stage, with wide pupils, "Tom Gaylord is coming!"
Judge Ballard kicked in with some blackberry cordial made from her own berries, though originally meant for medicine. Lon Price was a feverish Bohemian from the start, dropping in almost every day to tell Vernabelle all about himself and get out of convention's shell into the raw throb of life, as it was now being called. Lon always was kind of light-minded, even after the state went dry.
He then read, by permission of the Convention, a statement from Roosevelt, in which he pronounced the following indictment: "The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and the majority which has thus indorsed the fraud was made a majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates themselves who all sat as judges on one another's cases.... The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party.... Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable for any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds."
The entire conduct of the election and the final adjudication of the returns, moreover, were taken out of the hands of the officers, and from under the operation of the laws, already established by the Territorial authorities, to be vested exclusively in one of the Convention's own creatures, a reckless and unprincipled politician, whose whole previous career had been an offence and a nuisance to the majority of the inhabitants.
Senator Johnson, however, whose position has been consistent and whose opposition to the League in any shape is well known, withheld his support of the convention's choice until the candidate had stated the meaning of the platform, and announced definitely the policy that would be his, if elected.
We see all our children gone half of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of life behind us! That, for convention's sake, we call a Vacation. Your brave note came to-day. Of course, you'll "get" 'em those small enemies. The gain of twelve pounds tells the story.
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