expense of redressing them, will constitute, with its brilliant victories and great social results, one of the prime glories of our posterity. Of these results the wilds of California and New Mexico, whose acquisition is deprecated as useless and worthless, will yield their virgin bosom to millions of busy and happy men; and while the district schools of those regions will make the children thereof read in good English the history of the present day, they will be taught to look back with astonishment at the Wilmot Provisos of consumptive and stultified Abolitionism, and at the kindred expedients, in Congress and out, that are now practised in reference to these regions, to frustrate God's injunction, "to increase and multiply, and subdue the earth."

But political minorites are subject to a worse vice than any that we have yet specified. Man is so constituted that he cannot prophesy evil without exciting in himself a desire that the prophecy shall be fulfilled. The religious fanatics who lately predicted the destruction of the world, loathed the sun when it disappointed their predictions. From this cause more than from deficient patriotism, arises the fiendish regret which is constantly apparent in many of our citizens, when political forebodings of evil are not realized-when, for instance, manufacturers will prosper, despite the tariff of '46; when the vomito would not, last summer, extirpate our armies in Mexico, nor a mutiny at sea arrest the California volunteers and frustrate their expedition.

But another vice, of still graver import, is habitual to political minorities. A prophet will aid in the fulfillment of his prophecy rather than be convicted of error. Had the power of man been as gigantic as his perversity, the dis

California gold was unknown.

ciples of Miller would have conflagrated the world to verify Miller's prediction. To this bad influence we must, in charity, attribute much of the destructiveness displayed by political minorities. When the deposits were removed from the United States Bank, and ruin had been predicted as a result, manufacturers closed their factories voluntarily, and dismissed their workmen; shipowners dismantled their ships, and discharged their seamen, exultingly alleging that the Government had ruined them. The same madness on the part of manufacturers, began to evince itself in the early part of 1846. Opposition newspapers chronicled a few instances like the foregoing, which they hailed as the welcome harbingers of the predicted universal blight. And later still, after minority statesmen had reviled the President for claiming the whole of Oregon, a claim which he substantiated to every unprejudiced understanding, they moved heaven and earth to prevent England from yielding her conflicting pretensions, and to intimidate the President by threats of war, from adhering to his country's rights.

But, finally, this article is written, not to irritate by crimination, but to cure, by holding naked up to vice its own image. While intellect attacks intellect, the encounter is always salutary. Controversy is never pernicious but when the feelings enlist in the fight. England, from whom we derive much of our knowledge, and most of our errors, is fast freeing herself from the political evils of factious minorities, though they are still in full bloom with us. Her Legislature never exhibits now, a party in conflict with the interests of her empire. In her Oregon conflict with us, her Councils and public press exhibited no advocates for America, and while the faithful unanimity of her statesmen was urged in our Congress as a reason for yielding

our pretensions, the orators who urged the argument seemed unaware that they were condemning their own conduct, which enabled England to adduce our want of unanimity, as a reason for persisting in her claims. And were England at war with Mexico, she would not possess a Mexican party giving aid and comfort to her enemies, by Parliamentary speeches and newspaper essays, that would heat her Mexican enemies and cool British patriotism. Party politics have been termed, the madness of many for the gain of a few. Would that we could rid ourselves, like England, of at least the madness of disloyalty to our country. And what a country is ours to care for! Like the miraculous loaves and fishes of Holy Writ, the greater the number of persons it feeds, the greater is the aggregate of its surplus food. Well might one of our warriors exclaim, "May our country always be right, but may she always be victorious, right or wrong!" President Adams preferred another sentiment:-" May our country always be victorious, but may she always be right, whether victorious or not!" But far from the heart or thought of the old man eloquent was any imprecation of military defeat on his country, in case any of her contests should happen to be unjust. Doubtless, in even so sad a case, he would say with David of old, "let us not fall for our sins into the hands of man, but, if we must be punished, let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great."

MERITS AND DEMERITS OF EXISTING PARTIES.*

HAPPILY for our country, while partisans seek for spoils as recklessly as the Indian who prayed "Good Lord, or “Good Devil," just as he believed either would be most available; and while partisans of the same faith struggle with each other for nominations, like hungry Mexicans over the remainder ration of a dead American, the mass of our citizens possess no interest in politics but the public good; consequently the politicians who advocate the best measures are the most likely to succeed at elections. This is wholesome in theory, and unless we conform to it in practice, we abandon the people's only check over public men. Let us hold them to this check, and permit no shirking or dodging of it in the hour of trial. We are just emerged from a war, and if Whig office-seekers were right in aiding Mexico, let the people reward them for it; but if they were disloyal to the public, let them not escape punishment by interposing an honest man between them and their misdeeds; like, recently, the miscreants of Paris, who, to escape punishment, thrust between themselves and the republican. soldiery, children dragged for the purpose from the infant schools.

Whig office-seekers have maintained also, that no farmers, manufacturers, merchants, or laborers can prosper till the protection tariff of 1842 is re-established. Why, then, withhold from the people the means of passing a judgment in favor of the tariff of 1842, in the person of a Presidential candidate who is identified therewith; instead of presenting to the people a candidate who confesses that his opinion is unformed on the subject? Is this not sub

* Published September 2, 1848.

ordinating the tariff to the personal interests of officeseekers? If manufacturers, therefore, and others who feel aggrieved by the tariff of 1845, would hereafter see their interests attended to, let them rebuke this shuffle, by rendering ineffectual the object for which it was undertaken. We may apply similar remarks to the sub-treasury question, and to public improvements by the General Government. The refusal to present to the people a Presidential candidate identified with these interests, is a refusal to permit the people to decide them; and the people should resent the refusal as an invasion of their sovereignty; and that office-seekers may be taught not to distract Congress with questions which they fear to present subsequently, to the people.

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The nomination of Gen. Taylor is objectionable further, by asking the people to receive a President with whose notions they are unacquainted; as monarchists receive an hereditary ruler, "a pig in a poke," when our institutions. permit us to taste and try before we buy." And worse; it proclaims in language unmistakable, that one successful campaign outweighs the merits of a life of civil services; and when we consider who promulgate this baneful lesson, and when we contrast it with their professed horror of war, and previous denunciations of the nominee, is not the conclusion irresistible, that they nominated him in their hearts' disgust, and pandered to the supposed tastes and judgments of the people, whom they thus practically slandered?

From these defects in the Taylor nomination, if we look at the nominee, we find honesty of purpose, but great political deficiencies. He promises to veto no bill,' except in cases of clear violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of consideration in Congress," The Con