The Election of President.

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Charles the Tenth into exile), the political circumstances under which the elections had been carried on were not of a very critical nature, and therefore his remarks on the dangers to be apprehended from the working of the elective system relate more to what was likely to happen than to what had actually taken place. But political corruption in the United States partakes of the same rapid growth as the wealth and numbers of its population. Who can read the following passage from De Tocqueville, for example, and reflect upon the conduct of President Pierce, in his home and foreign policy, without perceiving how accurately it represents the motives by which he has been swayed throughout the greater part of his career?—

'It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without perceiving that the desire of being re-elected is the chief aim of the President; that his whole administration, and even his most indifferent measures, tend to this object; and that, as the crisis approaches, his personal interest takes the place of his interest for the public good. The principle of re-eligibility renders the corrupt influence of elective governments still more extensive and pernicious. It tends to degrade the political morality of the people, and to substitute adroitness for patriotism.

In America it exercises a still more fatal influence on the sources of national existence. Every government seems to be inflicted by some evil inherent in its nature, and the genius of the legislator is shown in eluding its attacks. A state may survive the influence of a host of bad laws, and the mischief they cause is frequently exaggerated; but a law which encourages the growth of the canker within must prove fatal in the end, although its bad consequences may not be immediately perceived.'

One great mistake of the founders of the American Constitution, as De Tocqueville proceeds to show, was allowing the re-election of the President. The result of this has been to make the chief magistrate of the Republican easy tool in the hands of the majority. He adopts its likings and its animosities, he Ihastens to anticipate its wishes, he forestalls its complaints, he 'yields to its idlest cravings, and, instead of guiding it, as the legislature intended that he should do, he is ever ready to 'follow its bidding.' One of the most moderate American newspapers-the New York Evening Post-describes the policy of Mr. Pierce in terms which show how clearly M. de Tocqueville foresaw the evils likely to arise from this defect in the American constitution:

The great ambition of Mr. Pierce,' says the Post, 'during his term of public service, has been to be nominated and elected to the Presidency a second time. It was for this that he violated pledges

solemnly taken; it was for this that he pressed through Congress, by purchased votes, a measure (the Nebraska Bill) which broke faith between the North and South, and made them bitter enemies; it was for this that he became an accomplice in the conspiracy to introduce slavery into Kansas by fraud and bloodshed; it was for this that he has made his name a term of scorn among two-thirds of the population of the United States.'

In return for all this wretched truckling to the slave power, the Democratic Convention, which assembled at Cincinnati a few months ago, to nominate a pro-slavery candidate for the Presidential chair, threw Mr. Pierce overboard in the most unceremonious manner, and resolved to support Mr. Buchanan, on the ground that he is favourable to the extension of slavery and the annexation policy. Not that the present occupant of the White House differs a single jot from the Cincinnati nominee on either of these two questions. His treacherous conduct with reference to the civil war in Kansas, and his promulgation of the Monroe doctrine in his Message to Congress, at the opening of last session, show that, whatever misgivings he may have had at one period, he is now willing to devote himself, body and soul, to the service of the slave power. But, in carrying out the despotic policy of the South, he had excited a most formidable amount of hatred against the Government. A sacrifice was required to propitiate the respectable business-men of the North, and therefore Franklin Pierce, after serving the purpose of his employers, was flung aside.

Ordinary newspaper readers, who have not taken the pains to make themselves acquainted with the position of parties in the United States, can hardly form a definite notion of the wide difference between American and English politics. They find the terms Whig and Democrat employed to denote the two great sections into which the active politicians of America were divided, up to a recent period, and they very naturally suppose that the Whigs must hold opinions of a much more aristocratic character than those entertained by their opponents. The truth is, that both parties are what we should call democratic; indeed, it is many years since the remnant of an aristocratic party disappeared from public view. Previous to the Revolution there was a territorial aristocracy in the free states of the Union, which exercised a powerful conservative influence on public opinion. But the abolition of the English law relating to the transmission of property soon produced a change. At the beginning of the present century the estates of the landed gentry began to be parcelled out, and since then they have been so thoroughly subdivided, that this class has nearly all commingled with the gene

Timid and Selfish Policy of the Wealthy Classes. 193

ral mass of the community. As for the wealthy classes, who have made their fortunes by trade, manufactures, or other methods, they take no part in the management of public affairs. Even at the time when De Tocqueville visited the United States, they had fairly given up the field to the triumphant democracy.

At the present day,' says the author of Democracy in America, 'the more affluent classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their countrymen. They concentrate all their enjoyment in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they constitute a private society in the State, which has its tastes and its own pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful not to show that they are galled by its continuance; it is not uncommon to hear them laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions, when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.

Mark, for instance, that opulent citizen, who is as anxious as a Jew of the middle ages to conceal his wealth. His dress is plain, his demeanour unassuming; but the interior of his dwelling glitters with luxury, and none but a few chosen guests whom he haughtily styles his equals, are allowed to penetrate into this sanctuary. No European noble is more exclusive in his pleasures, or more jealous of the smallest advantages which his privileged station confers upon him. But the very same individual crosses the city to reach a dark counting-house in the centre of traffic, where every one may accost him who pleases. If he meets his cobbler upon the way, they stop and converse; the two citizens discuss the affairs of the State in which they have an equal interest, and they shake hands before they part. But beneath this artificial enthusiasm, and these obsequious attentions to the ponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears. If the mal-administration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchical institutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious.'

pre

The class of timid capitalists whom De Tocqueville describes. in this passage, is chiefly composed of the merchants and manufacturers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other large towns in the North. These are the men whom Theodore Parker calls the Money Power,' and to their betrayal of the cause of freedom he ascribes the recent daringly aggressive policy of the

NO. XLIX.

Slave Power. Two kinds of influence are employed by the unscrupulous politicians of the South in their management of the various sections of the Upper Ten Thousand'-cajolery and intimidation. As an instance of the way in which the milder process is applied to the Northern mind, the author of Five Years' Progress of the Slave Power gives the following account of the means by which the support of the cotton aristocracy was obtained to the iniquitous bill for the re-annexation of Texas:

'A small system of high protective duties has long been regarded by not a few Northern Whigs as the one object to be secured by political action. To this class of politicians Mr. Walker of Mississippi (afterwards Secretary of the Treasury) addressed himself, when, in his famous letter on annexation, he said, 'Let it be known and proclaimed as a certain truth, and as a result which can never hereafter be changed or recalled, that upon the refusal of re-annexation, now, and in all time to come, the tariff, as a practical measure, falls wholly and for ever, and we shall thereafter be compelled to resort to direct taxes to support the Government.' What influence this had over individual minds, no one can undertake to say; but certain it is, that gentlemen largely interested in the cotton manufacture were leaders in the retreat which followed.'

Few of our readers will regret to learn that the gentlemen largely interested in the cotton manufacture' did not reap the reward of their selfish submission to the commands of the Slave Power. As an act of retributive justice, it is so far satisfactory to know that the majority which repealed the Protective Tariff of 1842 was created by the two senatorial votes from Texas.*

Among the various modes of intimidation employed to paralyse the political action of the respectable classes in the North, with reference to slavery, the most successful one adopted hitherto has been the threat of disunion. The coarser process of bullying was tried to an outrageous extent last session, by Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, and other doughty champions of the slavery interest, but the result was not calculated to encourage a repetition of the same line of warfare. In ordinary times such conduct as that of the brutal assailant of Mr. Charles Sumner might perhaps have had the effect of frightening the majority into silence; but in a revolutionary epoch, like that through which the Union

* We should like to know what number of Pennsylvanian ironmasters voted and worked for Buchanan at the late election. It is well known that there is a strong body of Protectionists in that State, and that they would willingly surrender a great deal in favour of a high tariff. Has there been no bargain between the respectable capitalists of the Quaker State, for their influence in favour of the pro-slavery candidate, on condition of his promoting their special interests? If any such arrangement has taken place, it ought to be exposed and denounced by the Republican press.

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is passing, a resort to physical force, by the dominant party in Congress, only serves to strengthen and extend the moral influence of the Opposition.

The threat of disunion, to which the Slave Power always resorts when it finds itself in danger of being successfully checkmated upon any vital question by the united opposition of the North, is something like the obsolete cry of the Church or the Constitution in danger, by which politicians of the last generation obtained the support of men of substance in this country against every measure of practical reform. But the American Slave Power is not content, as our English Tories would gladly have been, with the domestic status quo. For many years past the slaveholders have been the aggressive party, making continual inroads upon the republicanism of the constitution for the promotion of their own selfish ends, and all the while boasting that they are the most devoted followers of Jefferson and Jacksonthe demigods of democratic idolatry. One after another they have carried their cunningly-devised measures for the extension of slavery, and even when the North seemed to have become thoroughly alive to the demoralizing and dangerous tendency of the policy endorsed by the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati last summer, the threadbare device of threatening to break up the Union if Colonel Fremont were elected President, served, more than any other argument, to give Mr. Buchanan so much support in the Free States as secured him a majority for the Presidency on the 4th of November.

So long as the struggle for the Presidency lasted, the friends of freedom on this side of the Atlantic indulged in sanguine hopes of the success of Fremont. They saw that the best men of New England and the other States of the North were everywhere coming forward in his support. They were told that the German settlers, a numerous class in Ohio and Pennsylvania, who had hitherto gone with the Democrats en masse, under the delusion that they were thereby promoting the cause of freedom, had declared in favour of the Anti-Slavery candidate. The ministers of religion throughout the North were said to be nearly all on the same side, and, to crown all, the four leading newspapers of New York-the Tribune, the Times, the Herald, and the Courier and Enquirer, each possessing an immense circulation, gave their hearty support to Colonel Fremont. And then the glorious cause of which the Republican candidate was the champion! That of itself seemed enough to secure the hearty co-operation of all truehearted men throughout the Union. To vote for Mr. Buchanan, the nominee of the Slave Power, who had pledged himself to take the Cincinnati platform' as his political creed, was to vote for