had originated and by whom it had been fostered, very many disapproved the violence of its declared policy -- of that policy which had closed the doors to all hopes for Reconciliation and Peace, and which had opened the doors, invitingly, to Revolution and Rebellion, to War and Ruin -- and drew back from those who continued to sustain the Congress and who, then, were preparing to enforce its decrees ; while the latter portion of those classes, allied with the revolutionary faction whom those commercial and mercantile classes had previously declined to recognize and for whom, individually and collectively, only that superficial respect which practical politicians have always entertained for those, of lower ranks of society, whom they have sought to employ as the means of their own advancement to place and influence and wealth, was entertained, proceeded to enforce, by fair means or by foul, the various decrees, thinly disguised as " recommendations," which the Congress had enacted.

The memory of those readers whose hairs of gray reveal the advent or the presence of old age, will be very likely to compare all these circumstances with similar circumstances which have occurred, within our own country and within the period of their own personal recollections ; and to the practical, personal knowledge of that hoary headed tribunal we may safely refer all these movements and counter-movements for the advancement or the obstruction of predetermined and unholy revolt, for its intelligent judgment. The glamour of success may have made all these transactions, before the Congress was convened and while it was in session and after its dissolution, appear to have been possessed of different characters from those which they really possessed ; the diligence of personal descendants, whose best claim to distinction among men rests only on the apocryphal fame of their ancestors, actors in those events, may have transformed the pigmies and the political tricksters and those who were without honor or honesty or manliness, of that period, into great men and patriots and men of virtue, of integrity, and of personal uprightness ; but, notwithstanding all these fictitious interpositions, the Truth remains, unchanged and unchangeable.