fore hopeful effort to relieve his natal soil from a system which smites it as with a manifest curse from God. If you vote for that religious man— nay if you do not so vote that your ballot shall tell against him,-in other words if you do not vote for that man of no religious name or pretension--you vote in effect for the continuance of slavery. Is it not plain, that in such a case, you ought to vote for the candidate whose personal character you disapprove, and against the candidate whose personal character is unexceptionable.

We see then that the question to be decided by the votes of the people at an election, may sometimes have a moral significance by virtue of which it shall transcend all questions touching the personal qualifications of the several candidates before the people, as far as those questions of personal character transcend the ordinary questions of party politics. As the financial question between a high tariff of duties, and another tariff not so high, or that between one mode of keeping the public money and another, sinks into insignificance by the side of the moral question, whether such a man as Aaron Burr or such a man as John Jay shall receive the highest honors of the republic; so, on the other hand any ordinary question as to the personal qualities of one man in comparison with the personal qualities of another man, may sink into insignificance by the side of some great question of national morality and national destiny.

There is another thought in relation to questions of this class. Your suffrage is claimed for one candidate on the ground that he is an exemplary citizen-a Protestant Christian a member of an evangelical church; but you have no sufficient evidence that his political abilities are such as are indispensable to a right management of the public affairs at the particular crisis which

seems to be impending. The only other candidate that can be reason. ably thought of, is fully competent, you have no doubt of his ability; but he is a Roman Catholic, or he is a Unitarian, or he has been concerned in a duel, or there is some stain of immorality upon his character, though his career in public life gives you no reason to distrust his honesty as a man of business. If this man is not elected, the government is sure to fall into inexperienced and incapable hands. And yet the times are such that none but an experienced and able statesman can be trusted. A weak or incom petent man at the head of the republic in such times, might work great mischief with the best intentions. Look at the case then as it stands, and let your own moral sense tell you what you ought to do. It is well to have a pious physician; but you must have confidence in his knowledge and skill, or your conscience will not permit you to em. ploy him in the hour of peril instead of that other physician of undoubted ability whose religious opinions are unsound. It is well to sail with a pious captain in command of the ship. But you are on a voyage, and it so happens that the ship's company are under the necessity of choosing some one to take command. Some of them are for choosing one whom you know to be a good man, and who is very useful among the sailors and the passengers as a religious man; but you have no confidence in his ability to command and navigate the vessel. Others are for choosing one who is no Christian at all and very little of a gentleman, but who is nevertheless a most experienced seaman, and of whose ability to control the crew and to bring the vessel into port you have no doubt. What kind of a conscience is that which would lead you in those circumstances to vote for the incompetent man because of his being a devout

man ? Do you tell us that you will trust in God who ruleth the raging of the sea, and maketh the storm a calm? Do you tell us, from the Scripture," He will give his angels charge over thee to keep thee?" Remember it is written again, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

IV. It may be thought that we are tending to conclusions quite co incident with the ordinary maxims of party politics. One and another may be ready to ask us, "Am I not right then in voting always for the regular nomination of my own party -no matter whom the party may nominate?" This is no doubt the first principle of what is called party discipline. The welfare of the country being the professed end, the success of the party is assumed to be the exclusive means; and in order that the party may be successful, every member of it must vote unfailingly for the "regular nomination," made out in conformity with what are called "the usages of the party." The nomination being once made, and " the ticket" having once been adopted as the symbol of the party, it must be voted for with an implicit submission to the authority from which it proceeds; he who holds back or hesitates-above all he who stands out in oppositioncommits an offense never to be forgotten. Thus it is that thousands of intelligent men have no rule or principle in regard to the exercise of their elective franchise, but simply to follow the dictation of their party. So far are we then from counsel ing you to follow your party, and to vote at their dictation let them nominate whom they may, that we would caution you against assuming that the success of your party is essential to the welfare of the country. It would even be safer to as sume that the parties as they now exist are, one and all, essentially mischievous. Think what these parties are in their organization and

working. Who are "the party ?" Who are they that make the nominations which you are bound to vote for? How is it in your own town or village? Are not the nominations for your local elections ordinarily made, if not always, by some little clique of leaders and runners, who call themselves the party? How is it that the nominations of the party are made for state and national elections? Whom do the conventions actually represent? By whom are the delegates appointed? Look at the conventions which have just been held; and say what was there in the getting up, in the composition, or in the proceedings of either convention, which ought to give any authority whatever to their respective nominations? You have more sympathy, perhaps, with one of those conventions than with the other; but what obligation is there on your conscience to follow the dictation of either.

It is worthy of serious consideration whether the complete disintegration of existing parties is not the very thing which the country needs, and which the country is now ripe for.

What questions are at issue between the two great parties whose nominations for the presidency have just been presented to the country? There have been in other days great questions on which the parties were in opposition to each other. Four years ago, the immediate annexation of Texas, and the consequent war with Mexico, were depending, and were known to be depending on the result of the election. At the same time there were other issues between the parties-and particularly the question of protective duties. Eight years ago, there was not only the question of protective duties, but the question of the distribution of the funds accruing from the sales of public lands, and the question of what was called the independent treasury. Twelve years ago, the parties stood confronted on

the question of rechartering the Bank of the United States. But what question is there now between the convention which met in Balti more and the convention which met in Philadelphia? What does either propose to do, which will not be done if the other party is success. ful? The annexation of Texas is a fact of history, and is no more to be disputed than the purchase of Louisiana. The war is at an end, the last formalities of ratification have been completed, and nobody proposes a renewal of hostilities. The existing tariff of duties will suffer no material change, whichever party may be in the ascendent, unless changes are found necessary for the increase of the revenue. No party will dare to encounter the strength of conviction with which the great doctrine of commercial freedom has wrought itself into the minds of the American people. There is no possibility, or thought, of creating a national bank; to charge such an intention on the whigs of the Philadelphia convention, would be as preposterous as to eharge the democrats of the other convention with a design to dismantle the navy and to restore the gunboats and the embargo. Which ever party may be in power, it will not venture on the establishment of any new fiscal institution, unless impelled by some hopeless confusion in the finances of the general government. The proceeds of the land sales are virtually mortgaged for the payment of the public debt created by annexation and our conquests and purchases of territory; and for the same reason all other questions about surplus revenue are pretty effectually disposed of, for at least two presidential terms to come. As for the improvement of the harbors and rivers of the West, and the opening of those great avenues of commerce which the West demands, neither party will do much before 1850; but after the census

of that year, the West will have whatever it may choose to demand. What is it then for which these par ties are contending? Offices-offi ces-the spoils of victory-nothing in the world besides. The question who shall be president-involves not only the question who shall be the heads of the departments, but who shall be ambassadors and sec retaries of legations, who shall be consuls and commissioners, who shall be clerks in the public offices and midshipmen in the navy, who shall be collectors and postmasters, who shall be tide-waiters and pennyposts. If the nominee of the Balti more convention is elected, every appointment directly or indirectly in the gift of the general govern. ment is sure to be disposed of with a view to the interests of the party by which he has been elected; every functionary from the Secretary of State down to the veriest menial in a custom-house, will have his ap pointment either as a reward of party services already rendered, or as a stimulus to effort in the next campaign. If the nominee of the Philadelphia convention is elected, the least that can be anticipated is that every incumbent who has made himself obnoxious by efforts in behalf of a defeated candidate for the presidency, will be removed from office, and that every vacancy, however created, will be filled from among those who have been active in the canvass for "old Rough and Ready." Here then we see a great prize to be contended for. Here is the cohesive power that can agglomerate parties and hold them together, even. when no great national inter est, and no question of public policy is involved in the result. Nor is this all. If the democratic candidate is elected, the democratic party acquires new strength for the state and municipal elections; it will be able to elect senators and representatives in Congress; it will be able to elect governors and other state

officers; it will be able to elect mayors and common-councilmen; and, by its control over the appointing power, constables, justices of the peace, watchmen, and scavengers shall all hold their places in consideration of services rendered and to be rendered to the party. So on the other hand, if by the efforts of the whig party in the state of New York, the votes of the electoral college in that state shall be given to the candidate of the whig convention, and if those votes shall help to swell a triumphant majority for the "hero of Buena Vista," then it is reasonable to expect that the whig party in the state of New York will be strengthened in that triumph, and that the government of the state and perhaps of its great cities will be for a while in the hands of the whigs. The same might be said of Ohio or of Vermont or of any other state in which the whigs have any chance of being, in any circumstances, a majority. We see then what it is for which the parties are contending. Once they were divided upon questions of principle, or rather upon great questions of public policy; and they contended for measures in which the welfare of the country was believed to be involved. Now they are contending only for offices" the spoils of victory." Is not the complete disintegration of both these parties far more to be desired than the success of either?

Nor is such a result beyond the range of probability. The great democratic party which came into power with President Jackson in 1829, and which from its organization in 1826 to the present hour, has never known but one defeat in a national election, gives many signs of dissolution. Of the men who were its fathers and guides, and to whose farsighted sagacity it has owed its successes, how many have committed themselves against the nomina tion of the Baltimore convention. VOL. VI.

If it succeeds in this election, it may renew its vigor; it may excommunicate the Van Burens and Cambrelings, the Butlers and the Nileses, and denounce them as "old federalists," and may be strong as ever after it has parted from them. If it fails in this election, it is dissolved as completely as the old democratic party was dissolved in 1824; and its elements must enter into new combinations. As for the whigs, nothing but defeat can hold them together. The candidate for whom they are expected to vote, is pledged to nothing definite, save that he will not be a party president. If, being elected, he redeems that pledge--if he refuses to dismiss honest and faithful functionaries for the sake of giving their places to the whigsthe party is of course dissolved; and the wrath which came upon John Tyler will be forgotten in the curses, loud and deep, which disappointed office seekers will utter against him. If, being elected, he fails to redeem that pledge--if all the offices of the federal government are divided, like the pillage of a captured city, among his hungry followers--that treachery will disgust thousands of patriotic minds, forcing them into other alliances founded on healthier affinities, and will thus dissolve the party which it seeks to serve.

Instead of saying then, according to what seems to be the grand principle of party politics, that every man should simply choose his party, and then vote invariably for the regular party nomination, we would rather say that sometimes it may be the duty of a citizen to cast his vote in just that way in which it will tend most effectually to the dissolution of existing parties.

V. But we may be told that, after all, we have done little towards sim plifying the ethics of the right of suffrage. Of this we are as sensible as any of our readers can be. We can. by no means undertake to give

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a formula which shall supersede the necessity of careful inquiry and deliberation on the part of him who would do all his duty as a member of the national sovereignty. And if any man must needs have the one principle which shall include all possible instances of duty, we can give no rule that shall be narrower than this,-You are bound to vote just in that way in which your vote will tell most effectually for the true welfare of the country.

Let the terms of our proposition be fairly understood. We do not bid you regard exclusively the interests of your section, your state, or your particular department of industry. You are to care for the welfare of your whole countrynot its gross material interests alone, its wealth, its power, its aggrandizement among the nations, but its true welfare. In the true welfare of a people are included not material elements alone, but all the intellectual and moral elements which belong to that people's life and history.

Observe again, we do not say you are bound to vote in that way in which you think your vote will be most effectual for the welfare of your country. We do not make the right and wrong in so grave a matter depend upon your erring and unstable thought. In this, as in all other ca ses, you are under obligation to do not merely what you think to be right, but what is right. If you think wrong, and vote accordingly, you will certainly vote wrong. True, when we can not see what is right, and therefore miss the right though earnestly aiming at it, God judges us according to our means of knowledge. But when it is in our power to see the right if we will look with calm deliberation in the fear of God; then if we err through carelessness or wilfulness or passion, God judges us not according to our actual knowledge, but according to our means of knowl. edge still.

Undoubtedly the questions submitted to popular decision at an elec tion are sometimes too obscure or too complicated for the citizen to grapple with, unless he is endowed with more than ordinary reach of thought and more than ordinary means of information. On financial questions, and questions of political economy generally, the citizen may be mistaken without blame; just as every man may err without blame in the conduct of his private affairs. But more generally, the questions on which the people are to judge, have a moral aspect, in view of which an enlightened and unsophisticated moral sense pronounces an instant judgment. The moral sense habitually exercised-that promptness in the discernment of the right and wrong which results from the habit of doing right—is ordinarily the surest guide in the decision of questions which concern the public welfare. It is always safe to assume that what offends the unsophisticated moral sense is wrong; and that nothing inconsistent with the law of love can be incorporated into the policy of the government without bringing God's displeasure upon the nation. In relation to all such ques tions, every citizen is competent to judge for himself, and is bound to judge right. Let him give his vote then in that way in which his vote will tell most effectually for the welfare of his country.

"But what is my vote worth? How shall I cast it so that it shall tell upon the issue? Where shall I throw my little influence so that it shall be felt as an influence for good ?" Let us look a moment at the elements concerned in the solution of this question. And for the sake of distinctness, we will suppose that the question relates to the specific exer. cise of the right of suffrage in the election of a president. While this case is in some respects more complicated in consequence of peculiarities in the form and process of elec