The Daily Dispatch: February 28, 1865., [Electronic resource]

To be saved from demagogues is one of the prayers which the people of the United States will hereafter put up every day. To be saved from ward committees and cross-road politicians; to be saved from candidates for Congress and the Legislature; to be saved from candidates for office of any kind, will be their unceasing supplication. To be mercifully let alone; never to see a patriot; never to be complimented on their intelligence and virtue; never to feel that the simplicity of their understandings is to be made game of by place hunters. This they will devoutly ask, and, come all other calamities, they will endeavor to submit, if this calamity can be avoided.

All monarchs have their vicissitudes and misfortunes; but none of them all — not Alexander, Cæsar, Hannibal, nor Napoleon,--ever came to such days of humiliation as King People. Only a few years ago, and he sat upon his throne, surrounded by courtiers who prostrated themselves to the earth at his feet, considered it a privilege to black his boots and powder his wig, declared that he was the most virtuous and intelligent of the sons of men, that the king could do no wrong, and that his voice was the voice of a god. He was clothed in purple and fine linen, and held a royal sceptre in his hand, and had more patronage in his gift than any king of Europe, and permitted no man to tell him the truth, or, if he did, dismissed him from his service, and lived a most jolly and satisfied life, thoroughly convinced that though other kings had come to grief, there should be no end to the dominion of King People. And now, alas, poor soul, he is eating grass, like Nebuchadnezzar; asking himself for a pass, like a negro slave; dressed in an old blue coat, dodging from conscript officers, and as drooping and disconsolate as chanticleer in a hail storm; so helpless, forlorn and miserable that there are "none so poor as do him reverence."

If ever this deposed and unfortunate monarch be restored again to authority, he will be a sadder but a wiser man.--He will eschew the flatteries of courtiers, and esteem that man his best friend who induces him to put checks and balances upon his own authority. He will turn an evil eye upon fanatics and demagogues, and when they prate to him of his infallible virtue and intelligence, will hold up to them the bloody record of this war, and scourge them from his presence.