reply that the supposition is absurd--that in this country such a thing
can never happen; for what has been in the world can be again. Besides,
this does meet the question of the _right_ of the Government, that
must be settled before the emergency comes. Now, we do not believe there
is sounder principle, or one that every unbiassed mind does not concede
with the readiness that it does an axiom, that, if necessary to protect
and save itself, a government may not only order a draft, but call out
_every_ able-bodied man in the nation. If this right does not inhere
in our government, it is built on a foundation of sand, and the sooner it
is abandoned the better.

But we go farther, and deny that a draft is a despotic measure at all, but
is a just and equitable mode of raising an army. True, if troops enough
can be raised on a reasonable bounty, it is more expedient to do so; but
the moment that bounty becomes so exorbitant as to tempt the cupidity of
those in whom neither patriotism nor sense of duty have any power,
volunteering becomes an evil. We found it so in our recent war. The bounty
was a little fortune to a certain class, the benefit of which they had no
idea of losing by being shot, and hence they deserted, or shammed
sickness, so that scarce half the men ever got to the front, while those
who did being influenced by no motive higher than cupidity, became
worthless soldiers. A draft takes in enough men of a higher stamp to
leaven the mass. The first Napoleon, when asked what made his first "army
of Italy" so resistless, replied that almost every man in it was
intelligent enough to act as a clerk. The objection that a rich man, if
drafted, can buy a substitute, while the poor man, with a large family
depending upon him, must go, if of any weight at all, lies against the
whole structure of society, which gives the rich man at every step
immunities over the poor man. When pestilence sweeps through a city, the
rich man can flee to a healthy locality, while the poor man must stay and