530 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
The revolutionary energy, so indispensable to the success 
of a revolution, was checked and fettered. A new-born 
nation, struggling for continued existence, was girt about, 
and tied up with red tape. Never in Europe has offici- 
alism been so dominant as it was in the Confederacy 
The public offices in Richmond would have charmed a 
Civil Service martinet. We, in England, do not despise 
red tape, which is useful enough in time of peace, but 
we break through the official net in the hour of trial. 
But the Confederate Government—a Government yet in 
embryo—adopted and observed all the forms of a settled 
Government in time of profound peace. When we think 
of this folly, we are reminded of the Pretender playing at 
being King in Edinburgh, while the armies of the actual 
King were being marched to crush the rebellion. When 
the Confederacy needed every man for the army, or for the 
production of food, there was a mighty host of Civil Ser- 
vice officials. In the midst of war, invasion, and revolu- 
tion, if anyone was called upon to perform a pressing duty, 
he had to visit bureau after bureau, and to go through 
more formalities than are dreamt of even in bureaucratic 
Vienna. The energy that was strong enough to throw 
down a fortress, was in this manner filtered through miles 
of official piping, until at length it issued forth in a tiny 
streamlet, with scarcely force enough to disturb a house 
of cards. All this was to prove to the world that a revolu- 
tion was not a revolution, and that to break from an old 
government, and to set up a new and rival government, 
was, if anything, rather an anti-revolutionary proceeding. 
In the midst of war and invasion, all the formalities of 
the Constitution were to be observed. What difference did 
it make to the people of the South whether they were con- 
scripted and pauperised according to the forms or in viola- 
tion of the forms of the Constitution? To what a con- 
dition was the South reduced. The most despotic govern- 
ment could not have inflicted more suffering ; but the will- 
ing sacrifices of the people intended for the altar of Liberty 
and Independence, were offered at the shrine of the lying 
idol Ceremony. Cromwell and his adherents did not suffer 
the cause of liberty to be lost forforms sake. They were slow 
to enter upon revolution, they were slow to begin war, but 
after the struggle commenced,they did not waste their ener- 
gies in the observance of constitutional ceremonies. ‘There 
was a time for protesting and then they would not fight, but 
when the Rubicon was crossed and the fight began they 
