The Wheeling Daily Register

THE RADICAL PROGRAMME.

Private advices from Washington, says the Age-Journal, of the most reliable character, indicate that the conspiracy for the inauguration of a war in the South has been matured, and that the adjournment of Congress will be the signal for the attack. Arkansas is to be the field of battle, and the way of it is this. Brooks is to go to Pine Bluff and declare himself Governor. He is to summon all the rabble he can get together to his support, and put his troops under command of General Fagan. He is then to proclaim Governor Garland a usurper, and is to call on Grant for United States troops, and he (Grant) is to contradict himself, and promptly furnish the forces to the very man to whom he formerly denied them, and refused support. By this means, the present constitutional and peaceful Government of the State, which has been established by the best class of its citizens, is to be overturned, and confusion, war and bloodshed to be inaugurated.

We might be disposed to doubt the truth of this report, even though claimed to be based on the most reliable information, were there not sufficient color given to it by the acts of the President and Congress. The mask has been pretty well thrown off, and a deep-laid plot to accomplish a revolution is as apparent as it is possible for anything to be. The President would not be openly lobbying for despotic measures, nor would Ben Butler, as desperate as he is daring, avow so boldly his designs, were he not fully assured that there was a deep game being played which they felt confident of winning, and upon which was staked a retention of power, and a holding of the will of the people in check by force.

Says the Age-Journal further: The carping slaves of party may laugh at the prospect, but we wish to place on record a prophecy, that unless patriotism is aroused and a powerful public sentiment, blazing with indignation, be directed against the consummation of the wrong we shall in a few months be involved in a war whose wrathful atrocities have never been surpassed upon this continent. We speak advisedly and mean what we say. We say there will be war, because we still have some faith in the Anglo-Saxon blood—in the noble spirit which has revolted against usurpation since it was first nursed among the rocks of Scandinavia, which gave us Hampden and Russell, and Sidney and Washington; which has not hesitated to cut the throats of kings, and which has made the knees of despots everywhere tremble with a strange and unwonted fear.

We may be mistaken in this, it is true, for every other race has had its grandeur and decay, its glory and its humiliation. The degenerate Greek now cowardly sneaks about the battle-fields his ancestors made immortal, and the Roman soldier bows in submission in the presence of the fiery Gaul. It may be that Anglo-Saxons, too, are ready to surrender the trophies of their thrilling and sanguinary history, but we will not believe in the sudden degeneracy, nor are we willing that the grave of their glory shall be dug upon a continent they have made illustrious by their triumphs. But we say to the unreflecting and sluggish people of the North that they had better consider the issue and resolve how it shall be met. If they are weary of their institutions which have made their country great let them be changed voluntarily, and not in obedience to the blows of the sword, or rather by the lacerations of the lash, for the sword is too bright and noble a weapon for the castigation of men who are willing to become the slaves of an usurper.