petty purpose of increasing the chance of the selection of their own. But enough of metaphor so transparent.

66

The election of '44 is to be no joke. Confound these Whigs-they are like John Barleycorn; why will they not stay dead?"-although it did so satisfactorily seem at one time that "the brains were out." It is, however, a fortunate thing for us, that we have met this year with the two sudden checks, in our general career of sweeping prosperity, by which we were brought up rather unpleasantly, it must be confessed, in North Carolina and Tennessee. Like the voice of the slave whose duty was to sit in the triumphal car to remind the conqueror that he was but a man and mortal, they have come to us as warnings of which we adjure our friends not to be unmindful, that even in the midst of all our present exultant strength, we hold our pride of place by a difficult and doubtful tenure. Let those who stand take heed lest they fall. At one time, indeed, so overwhelming in every direction appeared the reaction from the still marvellous popular delirium of 1840, that the only question respecting the Presidential succession appeared to lie within ourselves-upon which of our great political leaders and representatives the crowning honor of that office should be bestowed, by that nomination which was regarded as synonymous with an election. It is to the prevalence of this feeling that is to be ascribed the violence, intemperate sometimes to the point of suicidal recklessness of ulterior consequences, with which some portions of our number have carried on the canvass for the nomination, and the discussions respecting the organization, and mode of action, of the Convention by which it is to be made. It was felt that no serious danger attended this course; that as there was no other foe in the field in the least degree formidable, there was no harm in a little brotherly bloodshed, in a civil feud of friends. The calculation was egregiously mistaken the course of conduct to which some have been led by it, egregiously foolish. There is another great battle yet to be fought before the campaign is over, and the enemy has only retired to prepare for it-reculer pour mieux sauter;-let us beware lest we bring about the common rout and massacre

of all our sections and divisions, by ourselves making so different an employment of the interval; and by going into the contest weakened and wounded, dissatisfied and demoralized-according to the military meaning of the phrase.

There is no serious question as to the Whig candidate. It is to be ClayClay with an enthusiasm of personal feeling which we envy him the honor of having awakened in his friends and his party, far more than we should that of the office itself with which they are so earnestly bent to adorn and reward the closing years of his long political life. There is some little discontentsome little friction-but altogether insignificant. Webster's friends in the East are making a feint of putting him forward as a competing candidate for the nomination; but it evidently means nothing more than an attempt to answer at last his own yet unanswered question, where he should go? Back again !—is the reply now sought to be given,-back again, unto the arms of the Whig party; now that not only the special English mission and the $40,000 oriental expedition have both proved abortive, but also every shadow of a hope has vanished of keeping Tylerism afloat on the surface of things. To demand or to beg restoration to communion, in the name of the Whig party of New England, is clearly its sole object-an object for which the means is probably sufficient to success. Mr. Webster found that his political had become as bad as his pecuniary credit, and that endorsement had become as necessary to his name in a profession of party fidelity as in that of a promise to pay; so that the subscription papers in circulation among the New England towns recommending him to the Whig nomination for the Presidency, are simply performing a process analogous to that of those of a different character not entirely unfamiliar to his past history. Clay, then, Clay alone can be the man; and the indications are apparent enough, as indeed it could not be doubted, that the rally and struggle to be made for him will equal, if not surpass, in vehemence and in lavish profusion of means, the before unparalelled efforts of 1840.

It is evident, it is indeed avowed, that the Whigs are holding themselves back in reserve for next year. Their

most influential organs, especially among those most devoted to Clay, have been discountenancing the idea of any earnest effort, any hard party "work," in the elections of this fall. Some of those rather disaffected to that ascendancy, have indeed urged a different course-doubtless in the expectation that general defeat would afford a basis of opposition to Clay's nomination, with a view to the adoption again of some other candidate of the "available" stamp. Doubtless, too, the desire to avoid trouble on this ground has been one of the motives of his more peculiar friends in evading a general party struggle this year, the issue of which might have given some plausibility, if not controlling force, to the objections which a portion of the party are sufficiently disposed to urge as far as possible against their thrice defeated leader. But the principal motive is to husband the resources of the military chest, and to concentrate on one season's campaign all that would otherwise be divided between two. Meantime is thoroughly maturing the most active and vigilant, while quiet organization. Nothing that money can do to make it efficient will be wanting. We have heard it freely said by leading Whigs, that there are thousands of men in the United States ready to lavish half their fortunes to secure the election of Clay. Who can set bounds to the contributions which would be joyfully poured in for the promotion of the same object by the enormous moneyed interests, here and elsewhere, involved in the State stocks, with a view to the practical adoption of the State debts by the Federal government, through the distribution of the Public Lands, if not in any more direct mode? And then there are the great manufacturing interests, who will be taught and persuaded to ascribe to the tariff their present prosperity-due mainly to the country's natural recovery and reaction from the late collapse of the credit system, and to that best of protections and encouragements of domestic industry, a currency contracted to the specie point. There can he no doubt that amounts of pecuniary aid to that object can be drawn from these vast and wealthy interests, limited only by the satiation of the demands that can be made upon them. There can be no doubt that in regard to this the main "sinews of

war" in the Whig political system, our opponents will be as overflowing in their abundance as we all know they can be skilful and unscrupulous in its application. We here mean only to refer to the less illegitimate uses to which large sums of money have been and can be applied with great effect upon contested elections-such as the support of papers, the circulation of political tracts, the payment of lecturers and haranguers, the stipend of spies, the employment of active electioneerers, in situations of influence upon large bodies of men, to devote their time to party service, the expense of vehicles, public pageantry, &c. &c., independent of any more corrupt modes in which we have little doubt that large amounts of money were brought to bear upon the appa-, rent results of the ballot-box at the last election.

On the other hand, there is every prospect that the Democratic party will have to go into the contest in a state of poverty even worse than their usual meagerness of supply for the most necessary and open expenses inseparable from an election. There can be no doubt-(and there is no imputation upon the purity of our political system in the remark)-that when parties stand face to face, in such near equality of force as seems to be indicated by the results of the two elections above referred to, in Tennessee and North Carolina, this enormous disparity in this respect becomes an element in the calculation which it would be extremely unwise to overlook or to underrate.

Shall we be reproached by any of our friends for thus openly holding a language so encouraging and stimulating to our opponents? We care little for such small calculations. There is no doubt that they will do their extreme utmost, with or without such encouragement from our side, and that every possible Whig vote will go into the ballot-boxes in the important November of the crisis;-we shall be only too happy, indeed, if none but fair ones succeed in making their way there. We know no arts, no managements, no concealments, in dealing with all or any of the political questions claiming our attention. It is not for our side or our cause that danger can ever attend a course of frank and open sincerity. It is better always to tell the truth and shame the-Whigs. But the particu

lar motive that has suggested this course of remark is our desire to awaken our own friends from the delusion in which the senses of so many of them are evidently lapped, that we have a safe and all-sufficient majority, so overwhelming that we can afford to distract and to disorganize it, by these mad and bad dissensions of which we see so much. If they are persisted in -in the spirit of growing bitterness which has been allowed in several quarters to break out-we are inevitably defeated; defeated in advance; defeated by our own self-inflicted wounds. Wo, then, hereafter and for ever in the future of our politics, betide those who shall appear to have been the responsible authors of such insanely suicidal disaster!

There are some who even on deliberate calculation please themselves in the idea of an election by Congress, as the consequence of the running of two candidates by the Democratic party, towards which this mischievous course of proceeding so directly tends-in some cases so directly aims. They argue that it would elicit a fuller Democratic vote, the different candidates being voted for in the respective sections or States where they are the most popular; and that thus, while Mr. Clay's defeat would be the better secured, the Democratic Congress then in power would have a safe choice where selection could not go wrong. We have little doubt that Clay would in that case be elected. The people of this country have derived from the experience he was himself so largely instrumental in affording them, a deeprooted aversion to Presidential elections by Congress; and that consideration might well indeed decide a sufficient number of undecided votes to elect the Whig candidate. And even among the friends of a candidate run in any partícular State, it could not fail to relax the effort made and to thin the popular vote, the knowledge that the result aimed at was not an actual election, but only the attainment of a position for a chance of one; while, on the other hand, upon that portion of the party in that State who had preferred and striven to nominate another, its effect would be withering to all zeal or cordiality, and most certainly fatal to all hope of success. There is not one of the States which may be regarded as

debatable for the election, where there is not a sufficient division in the preference of the Democratic party, to constitute a serious danger, if not a certainty of disaster, from this cause. No, no-this would be maddest madness of all, and should be most sternly frowned upon by every true Democrat-every one who, like ourselves, is earnestly solicitous for "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" common to all the sections of our party, with comparative disregard to all minor interests or personal preferences.

THE CONVENTION-THE CONVENTION

in that body must be found our safety and our triumph; and on its hearty and harmonious support by the whole and by every part, every thing depends. The disaffection towards its anticipated organization, of which we have been made to hear so many threatening indications, is the worst disloyalty to the Party, and to the Principles which Party affords the only means of carrying into Practice. If persisted in, it will never be forgotten or forgiven, to those who may be its authors. No course could be pursued of more fatal hostility to the true interest even of those in whose behalf it is manifested. Our own sentiments, personally and politically, in relation to Mr. Calhoun, are such as to entitle our statement to some regard ; and we do not hesitate to assure those of his peculiar friends and partisans to whom the above remark is applicable, that they are daily doing him and his prospects an injury which they may yet have cause to regret. The manner and spirit in which they dictate a particular mode for the constitution of the Convention, as the condition of their acquiescence in its action, have been calculated to try rather too severely the good temper and the good feeling of those who take a different view from them, both on this subject, and on that of the proper nomination to be made. The point of dissatisfaction is as to the single district (with a per capila vote in the Convention) or the general ticket mode of electing the delegates. We have no hesitation in avowing our own preference for the former-yet are we far from seeing in it a point of such importance or nature as to justify disaffection to the Convention on that ground. If ever a question had two sides, and two good sides, it is this. The argument in favor of the single district system is, simply, that it affords