We think he, being ardently attached to the hope of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had liberty every way.

He is the cat's-paw.

By much dragging of chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further use.

As the fool said of _King Lear_, when his daughters had turned him out-of-doors, "He's a shelled peascod." [That's a sheal'd peascod.] So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing everything in our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws of moral authority," for the whole party on belief, and for myself on knowledge, I pronounce the charge an unmixed and unmitigated falsehood.
[Sidenote] Illinois "State Journal," December 16, 1856.
Our government rests in public opinion.

Whoever can change public opinion can change the government practically just so much.
Public opinion, on any subject, always has a "central idea," from which all its minor thoughts radiate.