yes and no will satisfy the office-seekers, by creating a number of new offices. So people, banks, and spoilsmen will all at once be satisfied. Admirable! Hurrah for Lindenwold! Long live the little Magician, who can effect impossibilities! The specie clause, which alone gave significance to the measure, was moved by Mr. Calhoun as an amendment to the original bill, and was finally carried because he and his friends would not support the bill without it.

On the restrictive policy, Mr. Van Buren's friends differ not in principle from Mr. Clay. Mr. Van Buren, we believe, has always been a tariff man; he voted for the tariff of 1828, that "Bill of Abominations," under instructions, if you please, but that is nothing, for he and his friends could easily have prevented the instructions from being given; he admits the constitutionality of a tariff for protection; his warm friends and supporters fastened the present tariff upon us; the Syracuse Convention, which expresses the policy by which he will be guided, has, in a resolution, declared itself in favor of a protective tariff; and his friends in Congress have voted down every proposition for a tariff framed exclusively on revenue principles. We have, then, the fullest authority for saying, that Mr. Van Buren is a restrictionist, and differs from Mr. Clay only as to more or less. What great principle, then, we demand, is involved in a contest between Lindenwold and Ashland?

Mr. Van Buren's friends, the party managers, who have packed the Baltimore Convention to secure his nomination, on this vital question, and on all others, seem to us to shape their policy with sole reference to the success of the party, as party, and to have no principles they cannot waive or modify as they find it necessary, to secure success in the election. "What you tell us may all be very well. Mr. Calhoun is, doubtless, right in the abstract, but we could never succeed with a policy so ultra." Well; and what then? Which is better, failure with the right, or success without it? Which is the greater evil, a Whig

administration, or a Democratic administration with. Whig principles, or, to say the least, with no principles?

The time has come, when men should ask, whether the party has, or has not, principles; and to demand, in tones that must be heard, that, if it have principles, they be adhered to. As to Mr. Van Buren himself, regarded as an individuality, he does not enter into our thoughts. Personally, he is not of the least consequence. Give him the honors and emoluments of office, and you may manage the government as you please. All who know any thing of the four years that he was at the head of the government, know that he was any thing but an efficient administrative officer. Excepting a visit now and then, from old habit or personal taste, to the Department of State, he left pretty much the whole business of government to his clerks, and played the part of a gentleman at leisure. Our opposition is not to him personally, but to the party managers who will, if he is elected, be the effective administrators of the government. All will depend on the men who place him in the presidential chair, and who, through him, as their tool, come into power without its responsibility. Who are these? We know very well who they are, and what they are, for we see emblazoned on their arms: "To THE VICTOR BELONG THE SPOILS."

These are the men who are to come into power with Mr. Van Buren, and who, under cover of the impersonality of party, are to wield the effective power of the government, without sharing its responsibility. We do not object to Mr. Van Buren, then, that he is not available, that he cannot be elected. It is not his defeat, but his success, that we should deprecate. His defeat, the country could survive; his success would go far towards ruining it for ever.

But Mr. Van Buren will be the nominee of the Baltimore Convention. The question, then, returns, What ought to be the course of the sound portion of the party? Shall we support the nominee of the Conven

tion? On what ground? Wherefore should we support him, rather than Mr. Clay? What do we gain for our cause, for our principles, for the mass of the people, for the great agricultural interests of the country, by the election of one rather than of the other? Will the Van Buren men adhere to the Constitution, and silence in Congress the mischievous agitation of the slavequestion? Will they adhere to the Constitution, and bring the Tariff, on all articles, down to the revenue standard? Will they open the markets of the world to our agricultural products, and promote the great and abiding prosperity of the whole country, by an utter abandonment of the restrictive policy, not less ruinous to domestic manufactures themselves than to commerce

and agriculture? Will they? "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" We know these men; we know that a steady regard for, and firm adherence to, principles, are incompatible with their nature. They care only to succeed in the election. What possible motive can we have, then, for supporting them? What possible evil have we to apprehend from the success of Mr. Clay, that we should not have equally to apprehend from the success of Mr. Van Buren? We have no sympathy with the Whig measures, but, for ourselves, we believe the complete adoption of the strong measures of Mr. Clay would be better for us as a party, and better for the country, than the half-andhalf, betwixt-and-betweenity electioneering policy of the Lindenwolden school. We challenge the Van Buren men to show one good, solid reason, why an honest man and enlightened patriot should wish their

success.

What, then, ought to be our course? The answer to this question depends on the fact, whether the withdrawal of Mr. Calhoun's name from the canvass, by his political friends, is to be looked upon as final. We have always relied on the firmness and patriotism of the South; but the conduct of Southern politicians, since the assembling of Congress, has disappointed us. Perhaps we have misinterpreted them, and that they

have a meaning lying deeper than the surface. We will hope so, for we can put a good construction upon their doings. Assuming that the South has not fully made up its mind to sustain the nominee of the Convention, the course to be taken is very obvious. The friends of General Cass are manoeuvring for 1848, having lost all hope of succeeding, or of making much of a demonstration, in the present campaign. If we come into the support of Mr. Van Buren now, relying on the promises of his friends to go for Mr. Calhoun for the next four years, we shall be deceived; for they will keep no such promises. Mr. Benton is their man, and would have been their candidate now, but for Mr. Calhoun at the South, and Colonel Johnson at the West. Colonel Johnson is politically defunct; Mr. Calhoun, if withdrawn now, will also be politically defunct before the next four years come round, and General Cass will be no formidable rival to Colonel Benton. The Colonel will carry it over the General. It needs but half an eye to see this. If, then, the Van Buren-Benton men can consolidate the party in this campaign on Mr. Van Buren, no other candidate than Mr. Benton can be brought forward in 1848.

If, then, we mean to resist party dictation, party management, and party tyranny, on which Mr. Benton relies as much as Mr. Van Buren, and who would be an altogether more dangerous man at the head of the administration, for really Mr. Van Buren is the best man of his school, — if we really mean to break up the ruinous system of party, and of caucus management, bring the government back to the Constitution and provide for its administration with reference solely to even-handed justice and the public good, we must maintain our present vantage ground, yield nothing, no, nothing, not even for the peace and harmony of the party, but stand fast by our principles and the man who represents them. We shall never be in a better condition to do so. The great body of the Democratic party, in all sections of the Union, are, at heart, with us; and, were it not for caucus management, would go

with us; and party management must be made, and, thank God, can be made to feel, that they can attain to place, only by honestly and unequivocally, in deeds as well as in words, going with us for true republican principles.

It is not our province to give advice, for we are but a solitary individual. We choose to go for principle, instead of plunder, and, of course, must be regarded as a simpleton or as a marplot. Nevertheless, we beg the friends of Mr. Calhoun to reconsider their resolution to withdraw Mr. Calhoun's name from the present canvass. He is the strongest man under whose lead the friends of the Constitution can organize; and if they give up their present organization, with a view to a reörganization after the election for the next campaign, they will lose their vantage ground. The chances of success will be greatly diminished, and they will be too few, too weak, and too disheartened to accomplish any thing. No. Let them treat the Baltimore Convention as a nullity, and its supporters as seceders and schismatics. After Mr. Van Buren is nominated, let them say to themselves, "We are to-day what we were yesterday." Let them fling out to the breeze the flag of their country, and the old republican flag of '98, all torn and tattered as it may be. It can still stream against the wind. Let them rally under it, on the true republican platform, around the man of their choice, and march to the fight, and do battle, as best they can. They may lose the first battle, perhaps, the second; but, if they persevere, victory will at length crown their sacrifices, and they will redeem their country. If they will not do this, then nothing remains for us but to yoke ourselves to the car of Van Buren, or to throw up our caps in the train of Henry Clay.