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288 issued about the middle of February, before the passage of the congressional measures. The Union press then took occasion to point out what they considered the true status of this convention. The Courier remarked:

We have called it an anomalous body because in its present shape and with its present pretensions it is wholly without example in the free and republican states of America. It has been called into existence without any definite purpose or object, is wholly irresponsible, and, elevating itself above the constitution and the laws, aspires to boundless and illimitable power. It is, in fact, in itself a despotism, or the machinery of a despotism, which, in the name of the people, exercises authority inconsistent with the rights and liberties of the people—a despotism rendered doubly peculiar and unjustifiable by the fact that it has reared itself in the midst of free institutions and is upheld by those who profess to cherish liberty more dearly than life. It exhibits, in the emphatic language of Mr. Dallas, the extraordinary spectacle of a standing revolutionary convention untrammelled in a republican country.

As the time approached when the convention would meet, it appeared that the tariff adjustment would be accepted, but that the "bloody" Wilkins bill would give further trouble, and that the test