Ar the next general election in this State, representatives will be chosen on whom will devolve the choice of a Senator in the Congress of the United States. At no period since the organization of the government has this duty involved higher considerations in itself, or more material consequences to the well-being of the country, and to the position and destiny of the Democratic Party. Here, in this great commonwealth, it is the greatest public question of the day : and reaching far beyond the boundaries of a single State, it will affect, for good or evil, the polity and political condition of the republic.

We do not propose to treat this question in any narrow or partial view of it, or to crib it within a restricted range of personal remark. It is broad, national, enlarged, in its scope and aspect; and ought so to be considered by all to whom the public welfare is a paramount object of solicitude and promotion.

The condition of the country demands all this solicitude and devotion. The slavery agitation, at intervals for more than a quarter of a century, has threatened its domestic peace, and invaded its tranquility. It is the only real evil of our confederation which may be said or believed to menace its dissolution. It is the only deep-seated malady in which are the seeds of a premature national mortality. Wise and good men, and true patriots, seek to arrest the one, and extirpate the other. It is the province of enlarged and disinterested statesmanship to mollify and heal the distempers in the body politic—to check the tendencies to irritation, whether springing from over-sensitiveness to imaginary wrong, from ideal and abstract views of an inevitable condition of things, from embittered feeling, from selfish personal aims and calculating ambition, or from wilful, sinister and mischievous design. Such has been the labor and result of the better statesmanship of the country. At intervals in the history of the republic, when these sectional irritations and distempers

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have risen to a high and fierce excitement, they have been calmed by the councils and efforts of the true men of the times, whose fidelity to the constitution and the national interests, have placed them above the temptations of a temporary sectional popularity and personal ambition, and beyond the power of an interested demagogism. At no former period, have such counsels and efforts been more imperiously demanded by the common interests of the people of all the States of the American Union. A marked sectional line, dividing the country into geographical opposites, is attempted to be drawn—nay, has been drawn. On either side of this imaginary zone, are the fanatics, the zealots, of each. These, excited by a supposed self-interest, or by the arts of demagogues, or the appeals of crafty and venal aspirants to distinctions which are only attainable by them through a morbid, disturbed and embittered state of the popular mind, are arrayed, with high acerbity of feeling and much sectional prejudice, against each other. The old party lines, exhibiting the well-settled diversities of opinion as to principles and measures of government, which, since the adoption of the constitution have divided the American people, have become, if not effaced, far less distinct, and are far less recognised; and in their stead, we have the fierce spirit of sectionalism,-restless, reproachful, taunting-rushing to extremesseeking its personal objects through every form of irritation—careless of the Union and its continuance, and ready, and in some instances more than willing, to dissever its ties. That great bond of union, hitherto cherished with a fond and earnest devotion, and any hostile allusion to which has been regarded as a treasonable thought or intent, is in some quarters freely spoken of as a thing to be disregarded, if not rudely thrown away. State is arrayed against State—a spirit of sectional reprisal and hostility is inculcated—strife and animosity have usurped the place of fraternal feeling; and national pride, national honor, and national elevation, are merged in the aspirations of a narrow local or geographical “ point of honor," or a still narrower point of personal advancement. While thus in the States a fell spirit is abroad, pernicious in itself and in its consequences—the source of immediate mischief and of still greater prospective evil,-Congress, constitutionally required to act for the States and for all the people in the aggregate, presents a spectacle never before witnessed at the national capital. At this moment, eight months of the session have been spent literally in empty, unavailing and angry disputation upon this single topic, the slavery agitation, without even an approach to the practical and necessary public duties of the representative body-leaving all action affecting the every-day rights, interests and pursuits of the great constituent body untouched—representing indeed only the outside agitation, contributing to it, supplying it with aliment, provoking its renewal as the masses become wearied with its continuance, and reviving the flame of faction, whenever the popular voice for a moment checks its in tensity, and diminishes its force. Such are the general condition and aspect of our country at this moment. The peril, if heretofore alarming, is now imminent.

The origin of the present slavery agitation we trace to the attempt to force upon Congress and the country a needless and irritating abstraction. We mean of course the Wilmot Proviso. The legitimate offspring of the earlier abolitionism, and of its ally the former federal and present whig party, it seeks a kindred object by kindred means.

From the era

of the Hartford Convention, when the anti-slavery element became an ini gredient in the nostrums of federalism—at the agitation of the Missour, Question—during the subsequent series of the right-of-petition agitations with their adjunct, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbiauntil the adoption of the Atherton resolution finally arrested the combined labors of party and fanaticism,—the former, at each successive period, sought the aid and votes of the latter, by a pretended excessive zeal for freedom and “free soil," a professed horror of servitude, and by incessant assaults upon the South, their institutions and their rights.

While the Democratic Party, national in its character, catholic in its creed, and patriotic in its course of action, successfully contended for the rights of the States, for the maintenance of the Constitutional guaranties, and for the assertion of a broad and national Americanism, which knowing no section, disregarding geographical lines of division, and sustaining the great, common and equal rights of all the members of the confederacy~-claiming for each what it conceded to all-resisted and arrested these agitations, preserved the Union intact, and carried forward the nation—not a section or part of it—in a career of prosperity, honor and renown, unexampled in the history of nations,—the Wilmot Proviso, the last of the efforts of combined abolitionism and partyism, was thrown upon the country in the midst of a war, in which the American arms— not the chivalry or patriotism of the North or the South, but of all sections and portions of the Republic—had achieved a series of victories of matchless brilliancy, and had won a deathless name. Its design was to embarrass the administration in the prosecution of the war, to prevent the conclusion of an honorable and advantageous peace, and to clog the valuable acquisition of territory—an incident of the war and the peace—with conditions, intended to disparage the administration, afford aid and comfort to the common enemy, and to furnish recruits and means to recover the political power of the country for the combined whig and abolition forces.

The combination succeeded at the last Presidential election, aided by this element of discord, and the Democratic Party was overborne. A motley administration, with professions of no-partyism which all its practice has falsified, and with a pretended hatred of a course of proscription, an indulgence in which above all things has signalized its actions, was brought into power. The long war of Sectionalism and Federalism against the Democracy of the nation, in which the latter had so often proved victorious, resulted at last in the elevation of an ultra whig cabinet. It will surprise no one, that such an administration, coming in with such helps, should have aimed to continue and perpetuate the means by which it reached a position, so earnestly desired, so unscrupulously sought, but so seldom attained; and that it should combine with provisoism and abolitionism in resisting, and if possible frustrating, the great measure of adjustment and compromise, now before Congress, by which these deleterious agitations may be quieted, the general tranquility of the country restored, and the Union, its blessings and benefits, placed upon a basis of strength and stability. It will surprise no one, because it is obvious that any fair adjustment of the slavery question must deprive those who war against the national democracy of their chief reliance; and that the moment these agitations are quieted, their star will decline, and the Democratic Party resume its ascendancy.