firmness to resist the tendency to selfishness, which our institutions themselves naturally generate; and we must add, in their virtue, not merely as subjects of the government, but as citizens.

Here, where suffrage is so nearly universal, the great body of the adult male population sustain to the government a two-fold relation, the relation of subject, and the relation of citizen. As subjects, they are held to allegiance; their virtue is loyalty, and their duty obedience; as citizens, they are constituent elements of the government itself, and share in the administration.

A faithful discharge of all their duties as subjects will not secure the ends of good government. Good government demands, not only strict obedience to the laws, but just laws, and wise administration. The justice of the laws, and the wisdom of the administration, depend on the virtue and intelligence of the people, not in their capacity of subjects, but in their capacity of citizens. The republican form of government will prove a total failure, unless the citizens, acting as constituent elements of the government, carry into its administration loyalty to Eternal Justice; that stern integrity, and disinterested devotion to the public, which will force the government, in all its practical workings, to seek, always and everywhere, the greatest good of each individual subject, whether high or low, rich or poor.

The chief danger, to which our republican institutions are exposed, does not lie in the disloyalty of the people when acting as subjects, but in their venality and corruption when acting as citizens, — in their increasing want of devotion to the public good, and increasing efforts to convert the government into a machine for promoting their own purely private and selfish ends, each regardless of the evils he may cause it to inflict on others.

This distinction has not, we apprehend, been always made, nor sufficiently insisted upon. The teachers of morality, whether from the pulpit or the press, when insisting on the necessity of popular virtue to sustain

popular government, have confined themselves mainly to the virtue of the subject, that is, obedience to the laws, and the faithful discharge of the several duties involved in the various private relations of man with man; and it is still this obedience, and these private virtues, that our clergy have chiefly in view, when they speak of the necessity of religion as the support of popular government. Here is one great reason why we have so many tolerable subjects, who are grossly corrupt citizens; and why, with no mean share of private morality, we have scarcely the semblance of civic virtue. There has been, with us, in a deeper sense than is commonly implied, a total separation of Church and State. Religion and morality, in a political point of view, afford us little or no protection, because they are seldom brought to bear upon the people in their capacity of citizens. They will be sufficient for our wants, only when we are made to feel by our moral and religious teachers, that we must carry with us, in our capacity of citizens, all the singleness of purpose, all the firmness to resist temptation, and all the selfdenial, and disinterested devotion to the Supreme Law, that we are required to have in our capacity of subjects, or private individuals.

Doubtless, the cultivation and growth of our virtues as subjects will tend to strengthen and confirm our virtues as citizens; but, on the other hand, the neglect of our virtues as citizens will tend to corrupt and destroy our virtues as subjects. I carry my selfishness with me into the discharge of my duties as a citizen, and I seek to make laws, or to administer the government, for my own private benefit. But I make the laws. If they are against my interest, why should I obey them? If I obey selfishness in making the laws, I shall be very apt to obey it in keeping them; and if I am corrupt in what concerns the public, I shall not long remain pure in what concerns individuals. We would not underrate the virtues of the subject, but, in their effects, the virtues of the citizen, in a country like ours, are of far more vital importance. The former affect few, and those

only for a short period; the latter affect millions, and it may be through a thousand generations. Our religious and moral teachers should, then, bring the whole force of religion and morality to bear upon our conduct as citizens. The citizen, as distinguished from the subject, is a public officer; in voting, he acts in a public capacity; exercises, not a private right, but a public trust; and, therefore, is bound to vote, not according to his private interests or feelings, but according to his most solemn convictions of the public good. No citizen has a right to say, "My vote is my own, and I may give it for whom I please." The consequences of his vote do not concern himself alone. In voting, he acts for others, no less than for himself. It is not, then, what he is willing to submit to for himself, that should govern him, but what he has the right to fasten upon those with whom he is associated. The citizen, who deposits his vote, should, then, do it under a deep and solemn feeling of his accountability, both to his fellowcitizens, or subjects, and to the Great Moral Governor of the Universe. He, who trifles with his vote, trifles with a sacred trust; he who trifles with his vote, or suffers it to be tampered with by others, is as guilty as would be the Christian who should trifle with the most solemn act of his religion. He who gives his vote for the party, or the man, he cannot in conscience approve, and thus aids in fastening, what he cannot but believe an injury, on his country, is worse than a thief and a robber. He is a traitor to his God, his country, and his race. Here, no more than elsewhere, can there be the least compromise with duty, without guilt. To the citizen, as to the man, God says, "My son, give me thy heart." We must be made, as citizens, to feel this, and to act accordingly, or all is lost. Wise and just government cannot long coexist with the utter profligacy of the great mass of our citizens, as citizens. The citizens will impress upon the government their own want of public spirit and integrity. Our great danger lies here, in our want of high-toned, stern, uncompromising civic virtue.

It is not our design, in this Journal, which is devoted mainly to the discussion of first principles, to mingle in the party strife about special measures or particular men; but there are times, when men and principles are so interlinked, that it is impossible to disjoin them, and treat them separately. Such is, in our view, the present. We have reached such a crisis in our political affairs, that almost every thing depends, not on the party which now succeeds, but on the man we elect president. The great labor should now be to elect a president of the country, not the mere chief of a party,

a man who will go into office, and reform the administration, and wield the whole force of the government against the spoilsmen, and do all that he can, constitutionally, to arrest the tendency to suffer the politics of the country to lie under the control of the demagogues, as they have been for the last fifteen years. We want a man of high moral integrity, of a high order of intellect, of great firmness, decision, and energy of character, who shall look more than four years ahead; a man who is above all party trickery, and who disdains all appeal to party machinery as the means of his elevation; a man, in one word, the very opposite, in all his moral qualities and party relations, of Mr. Van Buren. We want a man at the head of the government who is a man, feeling his accountability to his Maker, and his duty to sacrifice himself, if need be, for the good of his country, and the moral and social elevation of his countrymen.

Now, it strikes us, that it is time for the sound portion of the people, disregarding all old party lines, and laying aside, for the moment, even favorite party measures, to rally around some such man, whether he has heretofore been called a Democrat or a Whig. Greater questions are at stake, than Bank or No-bank, Tariff or Free Trade. The very existence of our Republic, the very existence of our government, as it existed in the minds and the hearts of our fathers, and as capable of being a guaranty of individual liberty and public prosperity, is at stake.

If the right man, if a statesman,

instead of a partisan, be placed now in the presidential chair, the circumstances of the country are such, that he can give to the political action of the country a healthy direction, and aid in our restoration to civic virtue. He can dash the hopes of the spoilsmen, and rescue the government from those who would make it an instrument of plundering the many for the benefit of the few. We have carried our ultraism, on both sides, far enough, and, go we with the extreme right, or the extreme left, ruin alike awaits us.

Let

We trust this appeal does not come too late. Sensible men, in all parts of the country, are beginning to feel, that the success of the partisans of Mr. Van Buren, or those of Mr. Clay, representing as they do the opposite extremes, would be fraught with the most serious injury. Corruption has spread far and wide; the two armies of demagogues are marshalled, their drill sergeants are at work day and night; but it is to be hoped, that there is yet a sufficient number not enrolled in either of these divisions, to save the Republic. these men, who want justice and free government, make themselves heard before it is too late; let them select their man; let them rally to his support; and they will succeed. If not, if they fail, they will have the imperishable glory of having failed in a noble effort for a righteous cause. But they will not fail. There is a moral majesty in the movements of honest men and firm patriots, before which the unprincipled and corrupt cannot stand a moment. They will succeed. The moral forces of the universe are all with those who contend for the right, and let it not be said, that already the chains of party are so firmly riveted on our limbs, and our lips so closely fastened with its padlocks, that we cannot move nor speak.