no availability. Gov. Young's recent patriotic opposition to Mexico has greatly impaired his Whig standing; but it has, in an equal degree, enhanced his availability as a Whig candidate at any future election; while Mr. Clay's recent Lexington speech in favor of Mexico,* has enhanced his Whig standing to almost idolatry, but it has destroyed his availability. His admirers are again essaying to roll him up the steeps of power, but he can never attain the summit; and he will probably be cast aside like Webster, as too good a Whig to be nominated.

The same reasons prevent the Whigs from enacting their most cherished measures, when they happen to possess a majority in Congress, or in a State Legislature. Nothing, for instance, is more abhorrent to the Whigs than the existing restraint on our State Legislature against borrowing; but they forbear instituting enactments for its repeal, deeming such a consummation too Whig to be successful. So in Congress, while they constantly declare the Mexican. war unconstitutional, unnecessary, and a wicked slaughter of women and children, they have not dared to negative votes of thanks to the generals and soldiers who perpetrated these Whig-denounced acts.

The Democratic party, on the contrary, constituting naturally a majority of our electors, know that Democratic nominations will be likely to succeed, in proportion to the Democratic orthodoxy of the nominees; hence, in 1844, the Baltimore Convention rejected several prominent Presidential candidates, and nominated Mr. Polk, his feelings towards Texas and Oregon being more Democratic than the feelings of his rivals. This selection of a comparatively humble individual, with nothing to recommend him but his Democratic orthodoxy, was so variant from the practice of

We were at war with Mexico.

the Whigs, that they asked exultingly, who is James K. Polk?-implying thereby, that his deficiency of personal importance would ensure his defeat. But what can be wiser than thus to present to our electors principles to be voted for in the person of some candidate, rather than to present some candidate to be voted for as a wonderfully wise bel-wether, whom the people are to admiringly follow. Providence has not been so partial in the organization of individuals as to make one man superior to the united wisdom of a majority of his fellow-citizens; hence the people collectively must ever be wiser than their rulers, and hence. rulers exhibit more wisdom in subordinating their individual notions to the will of the people, than in persisting, as some have to their cost, in thwarting the popular will, and demanding a "sober second thought."

When we thus see the organic difference of our two main political parties, who can avoid hoping that Democracy may continue to prevail? Who can see the patriotism, for instance, with which in times of danger the poor rush to recruit our armies, and not desire them to participate fully in civil honers? If Democracy, in its good will to all mankind, is pursuing an unattainable end, let us find the error experimentally, and mourn over the frustration of bright hopes; but let us not assume the failure by a condemnatory creed, like that of the Whigs.

But in the approaching Presidential election, the Whigs are answerable for more than the possession of a repulsive creed. Forewarned by the historic odium of their opposition to the war with England of 1812, they determined to avoid all factious opposition to the Mexican war; but, alas! "man proposes but God disposes." The ball that is placed on an inclined plane will roll onwards and downwards, despite the intention of the man who placed it there. So the Whigs, who

at the commencement of the present war meant to be only a little politic, by claiming the merit of voting against their conscience rather than withhold aid to Gen. Taylor, became soon, by their minority opposition, sufficiently factious to procrastinate subsequent supplies of troops, till the sickly season destroyed more of our new recruits than the arms of Mexico. Opposition extended thus far in the first year of the war. A second year found the procrastination of supplies converted into an almost certainty of their being withheld, conjoined with incipient threats of impeaching the President, and of coercing a relinquishment of all our Mexican conquests; with aid and comfort to the public enemy in every way, compatible with exemption from the laws of treason. The actors in this sad spectacle must, in prospect of the present peace, feel like the Committee of the Hartford Convention, who, when they arrived at Washington to compel the Government to surrender to Great Britain, found peace had left them nothing for their errand but ceaseless shame. Peace left, however, something to be performed by the people-the condemnation of those who had arrayed themselves against their country in its hour of need. A similar duty will devolve upon the people now, and before another year history will again record, for the benefit of the country in all future times, that the wages of political sins is political death-and all who love their country more than their party will say, Amen.

THE VICES OF POLITICAL MINORITIES.*

SELF-PRESERVATION characterizes all the regular formations of nature. Caterpillars have ever cankered trees, but the injury is only individual, while trees, as a class of existences, continue unabated. Wolves and owls have ever preyed on flocks and birds, but the species preyed on continue as numerous as ever. Domestic inalcontents have ever struggled against social order, but civil societies preserve their organization-nature being more conservative than destroyers are destructive. And in addition to this general preservative energy which pervades nature, Providence fortifies the principle in men, by everywhere and at all times connecting our personal interests with the interests of the society of which we are members. What God has thus joined together, men sometimes try to separate. History records occasionally an Arnold, who attempts to benefit himself by the sacrifice of the interests of his nation, but so conscious are men of the impracticability of such attempts, that even the attempts are only sufficiently numerous to exemplify their hopelessness.

Rulers, Legislative and Executive, being thus almost constrained by Providence to govern wisely and justly, they present to opposing partisans no means of opposition, but to condemn measures that are not wrong, and to advocate alternatives that are not right; every political minority occupies thus a false position, like a lawyer in a cause where law and equity are against him. The indiscriminate advocacy of right and wrong by lawyers, is supposed to impair their ability to discern right from wrong; and the like self-abuse of the intellect that is practiced by minority

*Published in 1848.

politicians, is still more pernicious, because it is more unremitting. With no fixed principle but opposition, they are like children who play the game of contrary, never letting go but when they are told to hold fast, and never holding fast but when they are told to let go; consequently, by a remarkable sympathy which exists between our feelings and our words, such politicians soon become the dupes of their own opposition-like persons spoken of in Holy Writ, who, by a like process, are said "to be delivered up to a strong delusion, that they believe a lie;" or as Shakspeare paraphrases the idea, "when we in our viciousness grow hard, the wise gods seal our eyes,-in our own filth drop our clear judgments, making us adore our errors." They deem the country ever on the brink of destruction, uncorrected by experience, which is continually teaching them the falsity of preceding predictions; for, like monomaniacs, they impute the failures to any cause but their diseased misconceptions. We have seen that when the world would not burn up, as Miller had predicted it would, the failure occasioned only the assignment of a new period for the predicted catastrophe. So, we possess everywhere multitudes of politicians, who, though old, have never known the Government perform a worthy action, or act from a worthy motive. The whole political course of our nation they deem a series of misdemeanors, for the perpetration of which the offenders escape punishment by only some strange infatuation of the people-the very doctrine of every Lunatic Asylum, whose inmates deem themselves sane, and that the insane are at large. Nor can they learn by experience that political power cannot in nature result from offences against patriotism; hence they thus offend continually, but continually see power within their reach. Their ascension robes are ever kept ready, but the millenium