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question returns, shall that territory remain | erable divine who was an army chaplain at free, or become bonded? And that question, Matamoras, Monterey, Buena Vista, &c., "he when Gen. Taylor shall have been elected comes up, in his life, character, and principles, President, will remain to be decided by the Peo- nearer to Washington than any other public ple and their Representatives, to whom it right- man I have ever known.” fully belongs, and to which decision, when thus made, whatever that decision may be, Gen. Taylor will affix his name and seal.

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We have, in Gov. Cass, a northern candidate with southern principles, while in Gen. Taylor we have a southern candidate with national principles. In the former we see a man who has been as sand in the hands of those who moulded him to their wishes. For a presidential nomination, he has made merchandise of all that is high, and precious, and sacred. In the latter, we see an honest, upright, inflexible, free-thinking, out-speaking man, who would not compromise a principle, suppress a sentiment, nor modify an opinion to gain the presidency. In the hands of Gov. Cass, the government, judging his future by his past, would be corruptly administered, with a view, by its corrupting influences, to secure his reelection. In the hands of Gen. Taylor, judging his future by his past, the government will be brought back to the integrity and purity which distinguished the administration of WASHINGTON, for Gen. Taylor is one of "God's noblest works;" and in the language of a ven

There are those among us who, exasperated by the conduct of Tyler and Polk, and the miseries which have been inflicted npon the country by the last eight years of misrule, are unwilling to vote for a southern President, and who are anxious to make an open issue with slavery. We are among those who appreciate all the evils of slavery, and who are sure to be on the side of freedom when her banner, with sufficient provocation, shall be unfurled. But we cannot, nor should others forget that only for the conduct of Senators Cass, Buchanan, Allen, Dickinson, Dix, &c., sanctioned by their political friends at the ballot boxes, there would have been no annexation of Texas, no war with Mexico, no hundred million debt, and no extension of slavery. If the South, without the treasonable participation of the Northern States, was alone responsible for annexation, war, debt, and extended slavery, we too should have been prepared to strike. But let us, before that issue is made, see that we occupy vantage ground. Let our "cause of quarrel be just," and then we shall be ready to do battle with those who enter first and farthest into the conflict.

NECESSITY OF PARTY-THE PRESS-THE LOCOFOCO PLATFORM.

Ir is a very common error among the ignorant to cry out against party, and to disavow partialities: patriotism, according to these disinterested persons, is neither for this nor that side, but for the country. Let us agree with them for the moment; as not desiring, in this easy race of protestation, to be left behind, and becoming quite impartial in our affections, let us propose a plan for the good of the nation: let it be a tariff, or a tax on property, or a sub-treasury. Is it possible that any friend of his country can be offended at the proposal of so necessary a measure? But many are offended. A division has begun, and the yeas and nays have gone over to different sides.

Let any national measure be offered to the consideration of a promiscuous body of citizens, a division will arise as to its expediency. Some will go into opposition upon grounds merely theoretic; others will find arguments against it from policy, as being ill timed; others, again, will find it at variance with the pecuniary or political interests of themselves or their friends; all these will unite against it, and form a party to oppose it. Parties, therefore, whatever be our private opinion of them, are unavoidable, and it becomes us, instead of crying out against them, or affecting a haughty indifference to them, to use them, rather, as the only remedy for the less endurable evils of anarchy and despotism.

Nor can the struggle for power be deemed discreditable, when it is seen that this struggle is the most arduous and the most important that men can engage in, and that the very life of liberty is maintained only by the strife of contending parties. In free states, where public questions are decided by majorities, the strife of party begins in the office and the market place; every point of policy is agitated in private, and the representative is chosen with the expectation that he will maintain the opinion, and even the prejudice, which he represents. When the majority are well informed, and their representative is true to his function, liberty and humanity will be observed, and the morals of private life become the guiding principles of legislation. When the Constitution confers the power of suffrage upon a citizen, it imposes a duty; he has taken a share in the government, and is a legally qualified member of the great Council of the nation, from which emanate, if not particular measures, at least the first impulses of opinion, on which the character and power of the nation reveals itself.

In election to public offices, the people know, or should know, that they are merely choosing one of their number in whom they confide to represent the opinion, the character, and the interests of the majority; the Constitution intrusts them with this power of choice, and in using it, they impress their private judgment, and their private will, upon the goverment of which they thus become true and responsible members. How unworthy, then, of this high privilege are those inert or supercilious citizens, who affect to disregard the elections, or who speak of them as a vain and interested contest of office-seekers. A people who respect their institutions, and who not only know, but feel, that government emanates from themselves, will not confound the contemptible enthusiasm of place-seekers, with the ardor of patriots, or -if even that most sacred appellation have lately acquired some taint.-of men who seek for power only to avoid dishonor. National dishonor falls not only upon the mean and insignificant, but upon the able, the bold and the well informed; the honor of the nation is an element, yes, a palpable element, of its power and prosperity; if the affairs of the nation are badly con

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ducted, not only the weak and mean, but the men of character, of genius, and of enterprise, have to bear the dishonor and the punishment. Whoever, therefore, accounts himself one of these, whoever feels within himself the least spark of that generosity of soul which makes men republicans, is, so far, a POLITICIAN. Politics, the judging and acting for the honor and the prosperity of the nation, is properly an art to which all of us are born. We, the citizens, who think we have no masters but the laws, cannot be too careful or too vigilant in the exercise of the power of election, in which we perform the initiative art of government.

In the exercise of the franchise we are removed alike by our character and our circumstances, from any corrupting influences. We are too jealous and too proud to be influenced by our superiors in social rank, (if we admit that any such exist,) and the greatness of our numbers renders it impossible to buy us; neither by a bribe, nor by a threat, can we be enticed or terrified: only the trembling servants of a corrupt Executive, who, for an uncertain subsistence, have resigned every merit but that of an interested obedience, can be suspected of a corrupted vote. The motives which actuate us are those lawful and necessary prejudices, which form so great a part of the virtue of imperfect humanity: the prejudices of theory, of experience, of country, of family, of education, and of temperament. Either, or all of these, will give the free mind its bias, and make us of the one party or the other, on every question submitted to our vote. Those who mean to influence us individually, must appeal to each or all of these sources of opinion; and their only power is in that lawful superiority which is given by skill of persuasion, or of intellectual power. They may show us that national interests are at stake; they may terrify us with a gloomy prospect of the future; they may tempt us on with visions of golden prosperity; they may appeal to our generosity, our shame, or our pity;-but here their power ends; all beyond is corruption.

If there ever was a nation, in which the liberty of popular election was as general and as unobstructed as in our own, its history has not been handed down to us; and yet, this first privilege of freedom, believed

by the most sagacious politicians of ancient Nor is the intrinsic difficulty of the suband modern times, to be a perfect safe-jects themselves, a less serious impediment guard against every internal danger that to a right judgment upon them. Quescan threaten a republic, will not always tions of political economy, to be understood protect us against even gross injustice and at all, must be seen in the light of nature oppression. and experience; but men look at public affairs through the microscope of theory; their uninitiated eyes see only a distorted and discolored representation of a part of the object.

If it be inquired, why so simple and effectual a means of eliciting and establishing truth has so often failed of its effect, and men and measures, worthy only of a corrupt and ignorant age, have been inflicted upon the country, it is enough to reply that the public mind is distracted and discouraged by misrepresentation. True it is, our newspapers are a great restraint upon the unprincipled, and often hinder the execution of bad measures; but they know nothing of the press who do not know that its power of mischief is at least equal to its power of good; that it is a weapon that cuts with equal keenness the flesh of enemy or friend, and in the hands of bad men may be used to destroy the best and the most sincere. Good men, though defended by a clear conscience against the internal effects of calumny, have no impunity with the public: their very virtues may be made a theme of laughter, and their weaknesses and misfortunes exalted to the dignity of crimes. If the fox be biographer to the lion, he will paint him endowed with vulpine dexterity and fraud. In that state of servility and prostitution, to which the undue influence of the Executive has reduced a portion of the press in this country, it is not unusual to find the most enormous falsehoods deliberately maintained and propogated for party purposes, by men who otherwise maintain a respectable appearance, and, it may be, pride themselves upon the propriety and urbanity of their lives. These unhappy instruments of guile, incapable as they are, through a native imbecility of character, of identifying in their minds the morality of public and private affairs, believe in two systems of conduct, one for private men and one for politicians. Their narrow intellects discern only a faint outline of the State, and their moral sense is far too dull to feel reality in any public principles. The things they seem to see, but see not, they are easily led to trifle with; and the pressure of authority and necessity soon compels them to employ their talents in trifling to some purpose.

The artificial eye of the editor or the economist, is interposed between their eye and the question. The enchanter draws about them a circle of yeas and nays, false facts and false arguments; their understandings are overwhelmed and darkened. They can determine wisely in the plain business of life, but cannot think for the nation; their very caution and conscientiousness obstruct them; and the headstrong pedant, whose knowledge of affairs has never extended beyond thepay ment of his grocer's bill, becomes councillor-inchief and legislator to a nation of merchants and artisans.

During the old struggles for freedom, the power of the press required to be protected and maintained; now, when the weapon is freed, and every hand may grasp it, we let it lie idle; and if ruffians seize upon it, we raise our hands to Heaven and deprecate the mischief, instead of wresting it away by the far superior force of truth and knowledge. There are towns even in New England, where the power of education is most felt, and valued at its highest rate, where a company of educated persons, either through indolence or pride, allow the community they live in to be daily insulted and abused by a lying and drivelling press, without an effort to establish the only possible remedy, a sincere and enlightened one. The power of political education is dropped into the hands of unimportant scribblers, able at nothing but the circulation of calumnies. While this evil remains, let no educated man in such a community either lament over or wonder at the growing triviality, grossness, or viciousness of the citizens: if he allows a fool or a knave to make his daily impression on the minds of his family and neighborhood, he may thank his own supineness and folly if both are corrupted in the end.

And yet if the press is fallible, nay, vic

ious and mischievous to a great extent, it is, notwithstanding, the great organ of truth; and in the free press of this country we find the instrument and sole defence of our liberty. If the Executive organs disseminate the most atrocious falsehoods among the people, who thwarts and contradicts them, if not the unbribed presses of the Opposition? If the ingenious sophistries of a war-party occupy for a time the minds of the people, what displaces and subverts them if not those ministers of truth and justice, the honestly conducted newspapers? What may they not do, what power may they not exert, moving forward and together towards great and sincere objects? Let us then no longer complain. With the weapon in our hand, and a fair field, we have ourselves to blame if we fail.

First, then, and above all other aims, should not our care be to present a firm and unbroken front to the enemy: to yield no inch of ground, but with a steady and vehement endeavor press home upon the public mind the great principles by and for which we exist as a party? The integrity of the party depends upon the simplicity, distinctness, and binding force of its first principles:- For them it exists-by them it exists--without them-it dissolves and disappears.

To set these forth in bold contrast with those of the enemy, let us cast an eye over the propositions of their electoral "Platform," in which they have condensed their creed. Observe with what a cool impudence they charge upon Whiggism the very practice which it spurns, and of which Locofocoism itself is properly the inventor,--namely, the subjugation of the will of the constituent to that of the representative.* Who, pray, is the inventor of packed Conventions? and who first converted citizens into voting machines, with no more force of will than would suffice to steady a glass of liquor?

Perhaps no system was ever contrived, at least as we have seen it operate, more effectual to extinguish the individuality of the constituent, than so-called "Democratic organization." Without the odor of sanctity, without the honor of aristocraty, without the pride of patriot

* See Washington Union, May 4th, 1848.

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ism, or the humble enthusiasm of the monarchist, the retainer of Locofocoism leads a negative existence; he is a man of negatives, he is subject to negation, he subsists upon vetoes and denials, his political existence is a blank: history will not remember him; he is a part only of the great mass, or lump, of the Locofoco majority. And yet this party, whose creed it is to sink the citizen in the multitude, has the audacity or the impertinence to charge upon the Whigs that old Federal offence of subjecting the will of the Constituent to that of the Representative. A few testy old gentlemen, there may be, still alive, who think that the representative is to be a nursing father to the "mass" of his poor ignorant constituency; but if there be any such, their place is properly among the draughters of Democratic resolutions, whose ingenuity in sinking the power of the citizen, and exalting that of the government, commends them to the courtesy of all old-fashioned Tories and Federalists.

Nothing, again, is more remarkable in the declarations of Locofocoism than the facility of imitation which it discovers,-the genius for blending contraries for while it never mentions the government of the nation without prefixing the word "federal," calling it always the "Federal Government," to convey the idea of its being a mere federation of the States, it has always manifested an extraordinary respect for the Central Authority, and has even dared to question, whether it would not be better if the President were quite free of the Senate in the appointment of civil officers; a liberty which would instantly convert the Presidency into a monarchy-elective, indeed, but none the less for that reason a monarchy.

It very gravely advises us, that the "federal government is one of limited powers derived solely from the Constitution:"- -a proposition quite necessary indeed to be set before Locofoco Presidents, and before that small minority of office-holders and friends who go by the name of " the People," but of which to remind a Whig citizen, were only to insult him.

These dispensers of political wisdom then proceed to say, that the powers granted by the Constitution require to be strictly construed by all departments and

agents of the government:-and yet it has became really dangerous to mention that sometime venerable instrument in the hearing of a Locofoco majority in Congress, for fear you be laughed at for your simplicity. As there is no sect so absurd but it has a text to back it, so there is no usurpation without its constitutional apology. Strict construction is but an entering wedge for innovation, and there is no political heresy but has its constitutional text. Let any man set up this rule of strict construction, and we know what he would be at. Those only who inquire out the spirit of the law are to be trusted for an instant with its application. The letter kills, the spirit only can save us.

And yet, a stricter construction of the Constitution might not be undesirable even for the Whigs: it might perhaps lead to the impeachment of a President, who, by wresting the Constitution, has involved the nation in a cruel and costly war.

Locofoco majorities, infected with a horror of unnecessary outlay, declare against all projects of internal improvement. It were a violation of first principles in their esteem, should the government, or, as they prefer to call it, the federal government, of the nation, lay out a few millions on harbors in the North, or om a canal or a railroad, to connect eastern and western commerce with the South;but we all know how readily they will vote away a hundred millions, for the sake of external improvement, such as a right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a harbor on the coast of California, or a tract of gold mines and Buffalo prairies in the south-west. Millions they will spend to extend cotton interests, millions to the western hunters and borderers, millions in Texas, millions in Mexico and Yucatan, millions anywhere, so it be of no use to the industrious artisans of the North and West. With EXTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS they are greatly in love, with internal, not at all. At home, the strict constructionist, full of the law, bears hard upon his family and neighbors: he is a man of principle, forsooth, a straight-backed Pharisee, a political puritan;-but open to him a project of foreign conquest, for the extension of free trade, of slavery, or of the Democratic privilege of occupying the lands and cities of a neighbor, he begins at once to

dilate upon the growing wealth and commerce of the nation, and proposes vast improvements in the army, the navy, the public debt, and the executive patronage, to be paid for in the property and liberties of future generations.

Certain it is, indeed, that the Constitution does not confer upon the general government the power to commence and carry on wars for the acquisition of new territory -as certain as that it does confer the power of" commencing and carrying on a system of internal improvements.' Is the system of the post office established solely for the uses of the government, or is its better conduct a part of a system of Internal Improvement for the benefit of the whole people? Is the establishment of a “harbor for shelter," or a lighthouse, or a military road, a national telegraph, forbidden by the Constitution? and if the harbor established for shelter was used also for commerce, though no such use had been contemplated,-if the military road became a great emigrant route and stage road,increasing the value of property in all the districts. through which it ran,--if the lighthouse benefited especially the coasters of a particular State, more than those of other States,-if the telegraph enriches commercial speculators and manufacturers,— would these incidental benefits be advanced as arguments against the appropriations for such purposes in Congress?

Trusting in the good sense of the nation, we have no fear that this doctrine of Internal Improvement will not ultimately prevail over that Locofoco doctrine of External Improvement. The people will by and by consider that a hundred millions spent in the establishment of a telegraphic Post Office, a universal navigation improvement, including the Mississippi, the great lakes, the harbors of the eastern coast,in the construction of ship canals, and national railroads,-in the protection of a valuable branch of manufacture, agriculture or commerce,--will be far better invested for the wealth of the nation than in the maintenance of invading armies. Money spent on Internal Improvements enriches first the employed operative, then the district where the work lies, and lastly the whole nation. But history shows clearly that of External Improvements, the most fortunate are those which only do not

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