lar motive that has suggested this course of remark is our desire to awaken our own friends from the delusion in which the senses of so many of them are evidently lapped, that we have a safe and all-sufficient majority, so overwhelming that we can afford to distract and to disorganize it, by these mad and bad dissensions of which we see so much. If they are persisted in -in the spirit of growing bitterness which has been allowed in several quarters to break out-we are inevitably defeated; defeated in advance; defeated by our own self-inflicted wounds. Wo, then, hereafter and for ever in the future of our politics, betide those who shall appear to have been the responsible authors of such insanely suicidal disaster! There are some who even on deliberate calculation please themselves in the idea of an election by Congress, as the consequence of the running of two candidates by the Democratic party, towards which this mischievous course of proceeding so directly tends-in some cases so directly aims. They argue that it would elicit a fuller Democratic vote, the different candidates being voted for in the respective sections or States where they are the most popular; and that thus, while Mr. Clay's defeat would be the better secured, the Democratic Congress then in power would have a safe choice where selection could not go wrong. We have little doubt that Clay would in that case be elected. The people of this country have derived from the experience he was himself so largely instrumental in affording them, a deeprooted aversion to Presidential elections by Congress; and that consideration might well indeed decide a sufficient number of undecided votes to elect the Whig candidate. And even among the friends of a candidate run in any particular State, it could not fail to relax the effort made and to thin the popular vote, the knowledge that the result aimed at was not an actual election, but only the attainment of a position for a chance of one; while, on the other hand, upon that portion of the party in that State who had preferred and striven to nominate another, its effect would be withering to all zeal or cordiality, and most certainly fatal to all hope of success. There is not one of the States which may be regarded as debatable for the election, where there is not a sufficient division in the preference of the Democratic party, to constitute a serious danger, if not a certainty of disaster, from this cause. No, no-this would be maddest madness of all, and should be most sternly frowned upon by every true Democrat-every one who, like ourselves, is earnestly solicitous for "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" common to all the sections of our party, with comparative disregard to all minor interests or personal preferences. THE CONVENTION-THE CONVENTION in that body must be found our safety and our triumph; and on its hearty and harmonious support by the whole and by every part, every thing depends. The disaffection towards its anticipated organization, of which we have been made to hear so many threatening indications, is the worst disloyalty to the Party, and to the Principles which Party affords the only means of carrying into Practice. If persisted in, it will never be forgotten or forgiven, to those who may be its authors. No course could be pursued of more fatal hostility to the true interest even of those in whose behalf it is manifested. Our own sentiments, personally and politically, in relation to Mr. Calhoun, are such as to entitle our statement to some regard; and we do not hesitate to assure those of his peculiar friends and partisans to whom the above remark is applicable, that they are daily doing him and his prospects an injury which they may yet have cause to regret. The manner and spirit in which they dictate a particular mode for the constitution of the Convention, as the condition of their acquiescence in its action, have been calculated to try rather too severely the good temper and the good feeling of those who take a different view from them, both on this subject, and on that of the proper nomination to be made. The point of dissatisfaction is as to the single district (with a per capita vote in the Convention) or the general ticket mode of electing the delegates. We have no hesitation in avowing our own preference for the former-yet are we far from seeing in it a point of such importance or nature as to justify disaffection to the Convention on that ground. If ever a question had two sides, and two good sides, it is this. The argument in favor of the single district system is, simply, that it affords the best mode of ascertaining the preference of the majority of the entire collective mass of the party,-the minorities in each State being allowed their proportionate weight in the Convention, and not being absorbed in the local majorities, so as to be made to count against their own preference. But on the other hand there is a great deal to be said in favor of the general ticket mode -on grounds independent of what may or may not seem to be the accidental interests of particular candidates. In the first place, its analogy with the rule of the Constitution itself, and the usual practice of the whole Union, upon the very subject in question, the mode of counting the electoral votes for the Presidency, constitutes a powerful reason which ought to be alone sufficient to silence any imputation of sinister motive, against those who take this view and this course. This consideration addresses itself with peculiar force to the supporters of a school of political doctrine, which looks with much less favor upon the idea of the domination of aggregate national majorities, than upon the preservation of distinct State actions and powers; and which attaches itself with peculiar zeal to all those features in the Constitution which tend toward the maintainance of State sovereignty and independence. The Constitution does not make the President the representative of the collective national majority, by prescribing the now proposed single district mode of electing the electors. It is a matter left to the discretion of the States themselves; a discretion which they all have in point of fact exercised in such mode as to make the general ticket system the uniform practice throughout the Union. The State of South Carolina allots the appointment of its presidential electors to the Legislature, without any direct action of the people in their election. Under the Constitution, it may even happen that a President may be elected by a national numerical minority, by means of small majorities for the successful candidate in the States which he carries, and heavy majorities, or nearly unanimous votes, for his defeated competitor in the others. In case of a failure to elect by the people, it is scarcely necessary for us to allude to the fact that the Constitution devolves the election upon Congress-voting, neither according to population through a per capita vote of the House of Representatives; nor on the mingled basis of population and State sovereignty, by the addition of the two Senators to the delegations in the other House; but simply on that of State sovereignty and equality, each State casting a singlevote, determined by the majority of its Congressional delegation in the two Houses. In the face of a constitutional rule so strong and so vital, in the face of a practice by the States so uniform and well settled, it is so absurd as to make it difficult to believe fully in fairness of motive, on the part of those who would make the analogous adoption of a similar method for the appointment of delegates to the nominating convention, a ground for party rebellion, executed or threatened, against its action, whatever that action may prove to be. We earnestly hope that this course will not be persisted in-in spite of all the kind and friendly efforts of the Whig press to stimulate and aggravate it. It may be well enough for the latter to indulge in the language of abuse and suspicion, against the whole political organization and action of the Democracy of the States friendly to Mr. Van Buren; and especially of his own State, in which they most falsely attribute to intriguing tactics of party management, that recent expression of almost unanimous preference, which proceeds solely from natural State local attachment, combined with other causes of a more general character, to which it is needless to advert. For the Whig press, this is all very well, and we have neither right nor disposition to find fault with it;"'tis their vocation." But attacks upon such a body as the late Syracuse Convention, proceed-> ing from our own political friends, are an insult to the Democracy of the greatest of the United States, hard to bear, hard to forgive, and as unwise as they are unjust. There can be no question that it constituted as complete and true a representation of the powerful party in whose name it assembled as ever can be attained by conventions of that description. It included many of the best and truest, as well as ablest men in the State; and the harmony of sentiment and action, on the business for which it was constituted, between the more and the less radical portions of the party, who are usually open and vehement enough in their mutual antagonism, was undoubtedly but the reflection of the corresponding state of feeling pervading the Democracy of the State. In fact, no dispassionate and honest observer, on the spot here, as we happen to be situated, can for a moment question the certainty with which the native candidate of the State would carry every district, every county, every town, every village, in it, so far as regards the preference of its Democratic party over any other of the competing candidates for nomination. So doubtless, would Mr. Calhoun in South Carolina, Mr. Buchanan in Pennsylvania, Col. Johnson in Kentucky. If the Syracuse Convention remembered the unanimity with which in 1829 the Legislature of the State adopted the general ticket mode of electing the Presidential electors, after its then recent experience of the mode in which the single district method could nullify the influence of the State upon the decision of the question,-if they complied, at once with the usage of former occasions, and with that principle of the Constitution of which we have above spoken,-if, while resting on the grounds of general policy so ably set forth by themselves, as a precedent for permanent rule, with a view to the internal harmony of the party, as well as to the maintenance of the constitutional weight of the State unimpaired by division or dissension, they at the same time followed also the example of the two other large States which had adopted any action on the subject, (to say nothing of Georgia, a Calhoun State,)-if, we say, they did all this, in the action adopted by them, of sending the whole vote of the collective State into the Convention, to be cast according to the undisputed preference of its Democracy, it was not because there existed the slightest doubt as to the preference and certain vote of every single district in the state. We know that some of the most zealous as well as most intelligent of the friends of Mr. Van Buren were in favor of the adoption of the single district system for the sole purpose of conciliation and harmony-in the perfect assurance that it would not affect a single one of the votes to be cast by the State in the Convention, whatever mode of voting should be established. We say this, because it is the unquestionable truth, and because we are anxious to warn and entreat our Southern friends-(and there are among them few sincerer or warmer friends to their great statesman than ourselves)— not to be deceived as to the true character and constitution of that body; not to be led further and further to take a ground less easy to be retraced, against the Convention, of which it is now irrevocably settled that at least a very considerable number of its members must take their seats on other qualifications than that single district district election system, which some have put forward as the sine qua non of their acquiescence in the nomination that may be made. Why, there appears every reason to deem it probable that a considerable majority of the Convention will be in their places on the general ticket mode of appointment, or something analogous to it. If the ground we have aimed to combat-for the sake of our whole Party and its great Common Cause !— be maintained,-and if double sets of delegates are to make their appearance at Baltimore, the irregular and disorganizing sets claiming seats under separate district elections of their own, and being supported by the main body of Mr. Calhoun's friends in that body and out of it, under threat of secession, dissolution, and consequent party defeat, if their demands are not yielded We refer to the unanimous vote of the Democratic members of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, in favor of the general ticket method; and to the Virginia method by which the whole vote of the State is to be cast for one candidate, by a large body which will in truth constitute a sort of convention like that of Syracuse, elected by districts, and then determining by a majority vote among themselves, the candidate of the State. The other of the four large States (Ohio) might have been added, if the manifest public sentiment and intention of the people as evinced by the general consent of its county meetings, may be taken as an anticipation of what will be the action of its authorized convention. to, it may as well be known first as last, and the whole idea of harmonizing and concentrating the action of the great Democratic Party of the Union, by means of a Convention, may be abandoned at once; and had better be abandoned at once. But no-we feel too well assured of the attachment of all the main constituent portions of our party to those common principles which would be so foolishly, so criminally, devoted to destruction by such a course, to dread that the dissensions menacing it will be suffered to continue. There is so manifest a propriety in leaving to the Democratic conventions of the respective States the settlement of the mode of electing their delegates-(precisely as the Constitution leaves to their Legislatures that of the election of the electors) that, however it may have been opposed in argument before its adoption, we cannot believe that that opposition will be carried out by any formidable number, into a factious and disloyal resistance, after its irrevocable adoption by any State or any number of the States. As we before said, our own preference has throughout been for the single district system; but not till we are prepared to carry the Democratic Review over to the support of Mr. Clay, and of all the bad principles of public policy which we regard as summed up in that name, shall we cease to protest against and denounce, with the most indignant emphasis in our power, this worse than suicidal course which has been so intemperately threatened, and already partially attempted to be carried into effect, by some whom we cannot but designate as the very worst friends Mr. Calhoun has in the whole Union. What may be the action of the Convention, we do not even allow ourselves to anticipate., It may nominate Mr. Van Buren-it may, Mr. Calhoun,-it may, neither of the two. It is enough to be prepared to support its nomination, whatever it may prove, with every energy and every effort. That is a question from which it is for obvious reasons proper and necessary that this work should stand entirely aloof. This, however, we may say-that if its choice should fall on Mr. Van Buren, and the friends of Mr. Calhoun should then hold back from giving to the party ticket the same zealous support of which the friends of the former have tendered the assurance in the event of their disappointment-Mr. Calhoun's chance of ever being placed by the Democracy of the Union in that high position which he would so nobly grace, would immediately sink to a position lower than that of any other public man before the national eye-(excepting, of course, the present Vice-President.) While on the other hand, a different course would scarcely fail to secure an ardor of grateful attachment, which would complete all that yet remains to be done to efface, from the mind of the Democratic party, the memory of the yet recent years when he occupied an antagonist party position to them and the great leader to whom their hearts are still bound, by ties combining the tenderness of personal affection with all the utmost strength of political sympathy and gratitude. And whether it is well to weaken or jeopard the formation of this feeling now, at the same time that so much injury, perhaps irreparable, is done to the healthy spirit of our party, by this system of irritation, threat, jealousy, distrust and acrimony, pushed sometimes to the length of abuse not the less offensive that it may be enveloped in gauze screens of pointed insinuation, and sometimes adorned with brilliancy of sarcastic wit-we commend to the reflections of the wiser and better portion of his friends. THE KING OF MEN. *Αναξ ̓Ανδρῶν. Not unto them, who sit on thrones and sway But he, whose ampler realm Subject to accident. The unstable wave, Perchance his roof Lies hidden in the shade of statelier roofs, Which not the bearer benefits, nor adds To the renown of noble thoughts or deeds. The haughtiest conquerors and throned kings, From Cyrus to the Cæsar of our days, |