IX.

PELF AND PLACE.

WE come to the question, how it is that the Slave Power has been able to accomplish the extraordinary triumphs which we have been reciting.

Its history is but the history of the aggrandizement of all aristocracies, and of all other arbitrary governments, after they have become, to a considerable degree, consolidated. It is able to bribe; to browbeat; and, through its bought or frightened instruments, to deceive. And through these appliances it works its will.

We do not inquire what members of the government put money in their purses by the passage of the Texas Boundary Bill, with its grant of ten millions of dollars from the federal treasury. The question whether this or that member of the Cabinet that used its great influence for the measure, or this or that Senator or Representative that voted for it, fingered any of the proceeds, is one with which we give ourselves no concern. But we should convict ourselves of the simplicity of idiots, if we pretended to suppose that that money bought no votes. Why, the history of corruption in governments, has it come to a sudden end just now? Have all trading politicians ceased to love money all at once, and have all trading politicians forgotten how to use the public money for their ends? We are not going to say that, when Mr. Clay and Mr. Pearce put the grant of these millions into their bills, they had A, B, or C in view as the person whose influence and vote would be thereby secured in their behalf. But either of those gentlemen, we presume, would laugh at the greenhorn who should pretend to think that they did not expect that grant to prove fruitful of the votes they wanted.

The Texas scrip was in the market. It was in the hands of holders, far and wide, who had bought it for next to nothing. If they could bring over a sufficient number of Representatives to pass the vote which would raise it to par value, they could afford to endow a large number of Representatives each with a pretty fortune, by sharing the scrip with them, and still make a great operation for themselves. What was to prevent their doing it? Are all the Representatives at Washington incorruptible? Are they all very Catos in integrity and contempt for gold ? Who, that knows any thing of the place, will put on a sober face and pretend any such thing? Are the movers in the scheme of granting the money to be supposed incapable of any such calculation? Why is it to be assumed that they are different

from most of the men, who, as long as aristocracies have existed, have controlled their affairs? Why is it to be imagined that the same class of persons who, in Boston, argue in the newspapers that a man ought to be starved if he will not do the work of Slavery, should in Washington be scrupulous about making it worth his while to do it? Charge them with it, and what would be their answer? "What is it to us, what use the money is put to? We want it voted to Texas, to settle a troublesome question. If private parties, interested for their own purposes to carry the measure through, choose to exert themselves to that end in one or another way, that is their affair, and we ask no questions about it." This they would say, calculating all the while, and with the best reason, that, under the management of other persons, whom it was no business of theirs to know, the money which they threw into the scramble would help to do the work.

We shall not be put off from accusing the Slave Power of this method of action, by any outcry against our making an unsupported charge of corruption. We do not go out of our way to charge any body in particular. But when a large number of votes are suddenly changed without any apparent public reason, and when the change of those votes instantly converts a small sum into ten millions of dollars, a portion of which would easily be transferred by a mere sale of stock into the voters' pockets, to the enriching of both buyer and seller at the nation's expense, we are not quite so incapable of tracing an apparent cause in a simple effect, as to suppose that none of the influence or of the votes wanted were angled for, and were caught, with the hook so baited. The holders of Texan securities would be the last men to thank us for supposing them so simple as not to know how to make something of such an opportunity; and the framers of the bills would not feel that their sagacity was complimented, if we should pretend to think that their grant of money was not intended to be put to such a use.

But this was a measure somewhat aside from the common course of operation, resorted to, e majori cautela, in a special stress of affairs, though capable of being repeated as often as a sufficient occasion shall arise. The regular method of action is through that vast patronage which the Slavery interest exercises by securing to itself the appointing power.

There are perhaps thirty thousand offices held under the government of the United States. For the principal of them, the President nominates a candidate, and the Senate confirms or rejects; and the principal officers in different departments appoint the subordinates; so that, after all, in the President and Senate ultimately resides all the appointing power. Thirty Senators out of sixty-two represent Slave States, and generally (as at the present time in the case of Mr. Bright of Indiana,

Mr. Douglas of Illinois, and perhaps others) there are Slaveholders enough elected from Northern States, to give that interest an actual predominance even in numbers; and the two great parties have for many years paid such peculiar consideration to the Slave States in the selection of their candidates for the Presidency, that the President, whether called Whig or Democrat, is certain to be either a local representative of the Slave Power, or what is apt to be worse, one of its Northern tools. It follows, what every person not entirely ignorant of the subject knows to be the fact, that from Maine to Texas, and from New England to California, no citizen obnoxious to the Slave Power can expect an office of any consequence under the federal govern

ment.

And from this it further follows, as every man of common sense sees, that the Slave Power brings an immense influence to bear, for the accomplishment of its purposes, on men of talent, activity, influence, and ambition, in every corner of the country. Mr. Caleb B. Smith, Chairman of the Committee on the Territories, managed the great question of the day, as he did, and was made Commissioner of Mexican Claims. Mr. Schenck, of Ohio, distinguished himself in a tilt against the Free Soil cause, by a well-timed speech, as soon as the question of the Speakership was settled, and he was sent on the mission to Brazil. Mr. Duer, of New York, who had spoken some brave words for freedom, withheld his vote from Mr. Root's Resolution, and gave it for the Texas Boundary Bill, and he was made Consul at Valparaiso. Mr. Wilson, of New Hampshire, also voted for that bill, after having declared some time before in his place, that, sooner than have Slavery extended, he would have, not the Union only, but the universe, dissolved. And the government has given him something, we forget exactly what, — in California.

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Do we hold up these names to reprehension? Not at all. We are speaking, not of the particular men who yield, that is a small matter, but of the mighty influence which is in action to make all men yield. The instances to which we refer the first that happen to occur to us among those connected with the recent course of events are but instances of what is always going on. We do not say that the gentlemen named, or any others in particular, sold themselves to the Slave Power for office. We only say that, however disinterested may have been their action, the Slave Power, by the advantageous notice which it took of them as soon as they had done its will, made proclamation to all dissentients, that, for the future, the way to eminent and lucrative office was through submission to its sway, and services for its benefit. And, we take it, no one will pretend that, in the long run, that proclamation will be without effect. When the Slave Power, having been constituted the

appointing power, is in a condition to make its own terms with all the purchasable talent of the country, the question how it is that the Slave Power has such a control over the country's affairs has already a sufficient answer.

And the influence works its way down through all the stages of public action, and spreads itself into every corner of the land. Its Secretary of the Treasury employs a thousand electioneering partisans, more or less, in the Custom-House of New York, and so on, in proportion, wherever there are cities. and trade. Its Postmaster-General posts twenty thousand busy supervisors of its concerns a few miles apart through the length and breadth of the land. It has advantageous contracts for the Post-Office, the Navy, and other departments of the public business; and this bidder or that will be likely to get them, according as he is more or less able and disposed to help on its objects. It has a great deal of printing to be done and paid for; and printers are often publishers of newspapers; and the offices which do its job-work are very apt to prove factories of public opinion in its interest.

Why waste words on a thing so plain? When the people permitted the Slave Power to become the appointing power, they exalted an aristocratic order above their heads. As often as, by the election of one of its tools to be President, they renew its lease of the appointing power, they again empower and encourage it to extend its usurpation.

No. X.

TERRORISM.

WHAT We said in our last number, of the use by the Slave Power of the patronage of the government to carry out its objects, is no matter of mere inference. The policy is frankly avowed. On the 10th of February, 1850, Mr. Foote, in his place in the Senate, went so far as to give out that nominations would be passed upon by him and his friends, not only with reference to the position of the nominee in respect to the Slavery questions, but also with reference to the position of the persons through whose influence a nomination was understood to be made. Referring to Mr. Seward, he said :

.....

"I glory, sir, in reflecting that this body has it in its power, in a certain mode, to apply a most efficient corrective to this accursed evil of agitation. To be entirely explicit, I will say that I, for one, let other gentlemen do as they please, intend to look hereafter, at the right time, and in a proper spirit, to all the nominations

for office that may be presented to us hereafter, as well as those now before us, in order to ascertain the precise influences under which they have been made, and upon whose recommendation the nominees have been so fortunate as to obtain the favor of the Executive. I intend to look back to all the facts connected with such nominations, and to ascertain for myself and for my constituents whether certain influences of a malign and dangerous character have been at all associated with any such nomination. say that I, for one, upon the ascertainment of such facts, intend to use the conservative remedy which the Constitution has given to us, for the purpose of defeating such nomination, and teaching the persons to whom I have alluded a sound practical lesson, which I have reason to believe will not be entirely lost upon them, nor wholly unprofitable to the country."

.....

And he called on "certain individuals" to take notice, that he and his friends were resolved to "put an end to their local consequence at home, by defeating every nomination which they may have had the least agency in bringing before the Senate."

This was a perfectly intelligible manifesto, and in the State of New York, for which, at the time, it was particularly meant, it reached great numbers of persons. Yet there was nothing new in the principle announced. It had been long implied in the practice of the appointing power. All that was peculiar in this incident was the unblushing impudence of the avowal, and the declaration that nominees for office were to be held incapacitated, not only by love of freedom on their own part, but also on the part of those by whom they were recommended, - both which things a more cautious champion than Mr. Foote might have avoided.

But proscription from public office, though directly it is terrorism on an extensive scale, and though, as an influence, it reaches great numbers beyond and through those who are themselves candidates for office, is not of universal efficacy, because there are numbers who do not want office or favors of any kind from the government, for their friends any more than for themselves, and who are jealous of any influence attempted to be exerted by office-seekers upon their minds. It accordingly becomes necessary to hold out some threat of more general application. And the Slave Power has been bold enough to attempt, and artful enough to carry out, to some extent, the imposture, that resistance to its encroachments involves danger to the Union of the States.

The assertion is one of those utterly preposterous ones, which make it matter of mere surprise that men of average sense and information could have been deluded by it. Yet deluded by it they have been in great numbers, through the brazen boldness and untiring artifices of those whose interest it has been to deceive and frighten them.

It would seem that nothing could be stated more plain than this; that, if the institution of Slavery is in danger, the very last of all things to do for its protection would be to break the Union between the Free and Slave States. Should the two divisions become foreign countries to one another, the military protection now due from the Free States would be withdrawn, and the