which has the intention and the means to do an analysis of the American population as it good. Their principal aim is to enrich the na-divides itself between the parties, and an enution, to make her industry independent of Eu- meration (much needed in this country) of rope, to develop the resources of the countrythe various sub-parties into which each of the not to extend its territory. As a rule, they do great parties is cut up. not court the masses, but they endeavor to raise the standard of their morals and of their education. They do not object to higher taxation for the construction of canals and railways by the individual States; they advocate the protection of American steam navigation by premiums, of their fisheries by bounties, of their manufactures by a high tariff. They demand that the States should establish higher institutions for science; that Congress should open and repair harbors, and remove the obstructions of rivers; and are friendly to an expansive banking system. They are opposed to all war, but ready to confidé power to the heads of the States or Federal administra-istration going ahead of public opinion. The Irish tion; they would give to the people the right of only electing representatives, not of binding them by instructions. To sum up their principles in a few words, the Whigs represent authority, commerce, wealth, and centralizing tendencies. It is natural, from the above-mentioned facts, that the great bulk of the manufacturers, bankers, merchants, and of the wealthier inhabitants of the great cities, are Whigs; the commercial interest is theirs, whilst Democracy sways over all the agricultural and planting States and communities, and especially over the slaveholding South; as non-interference on the part of the federal government-which, according to the Democrats, must follow the wishes of the people- gives more guarantee of stability to their peculiar institution than a strong and meddling Whig admin and German emigrants are also a continual source of accession of power to the Democratic party, as its very name is a bait for the multitude coming from Europe, though European Democracy is somewhat different from the American Democratic party. The Whigs feel this very strongly, and they have, therefore, appended the designation of Democratic to their party-name. As far as I was able to find, this measure has remained without success, and the Irish and Germans take the Whigs generally for enemies, not only of the Democratic party, but also of Democratic institutions. They do it so much the more, as a set of narrow-minded conservative Whigs, in the seaport cities, have constituted themselves as the Native Party, wishing to restrict the laws of naturalization, thus to withhold the right of voting in elections from all the emigrants, and reserving the vote for those who were born in America. Some years ago the native party found many theoretical supporters amongst the Whigs, and some few even amongst the Democrats; but after having created ill-feeling amongst the emigrants, and driven all the naturalized citizens to the Democratic ranks, it went on declining, and is only in a few places still of some local importance. The Democrats, on the other side, take it for granted that government is nothing but a necessary evil. They think that, by the frailty of human nature, every government is too apt to extend its power, to encroach upon the rights of the people, and to squander the public income. They require, therefore, a government which does as little as possible; they claim only that it should not obstruct the free development of the people, according to its own wants and requirements. They like military glory, and territorial extension. Government, according to them, must be powerful and commanding towards the foreigner; protecting the citizens and their pursuits abroad, but not interfering in any way with their concerns at home-it has always to act according to the expressed wishes of the people, which has the right of directing the government. The Democrats, therefore, are free-traders in principle, and advocates of a gold currency; they leave the construction of canals and railways to the speculation of individuals and of companies, and are generally averse to the government supBut the party-division does not stop here. In port of such undertakings. They oppose the in- the ranks of the Democrats, as well as of the crease of the standing army, but war is always Whigs, there are different shades, each of them popular with them, because it extends the ter- characterized by a nickname, and all quarrelling ritory of the Union, and rouses the slumbering with one another, though at the elections fightenergies of the masses, to whose will and to ing under the common banner against the oppowhose passions they readily submit. Their rep-site party. The conservative Democrats, who resentatives and senators are strictly delegates, sturdily oppose every progressive measure, got and have to give up their seats if their instruc- the nickname of Old Hunkers. They are always tions do not agree with their convictions. They at hand when spoils are to be divided, and often affirm, as a cardinal truth, that the world is governed too much. They are enemies of centralization, and of all restriction, and as every law is a restriction, they do not like much legislating, fully convinced that the people is always able to govern itself well, without being led by the officials. The Democrats represent liberty, self-government of the people, agriculture, and territorial expansion. To this account of the general principles and tendencies of the two great parties of the American political world, Mr. Pulszky adds get a share even of the Whig government contracts. The progressive wing of Democracy was originally called Locofocos, or concisely Locos, from the fact that, at a great Democratic meeting, where the Old Hunkers, after having carried their resolutions in a hurried way, adjourned, and put the lights out, the progressive section remained in the dark hall, and lighting the gas up by a locofoco-match (the American name for lucifer-matches) continued the meeting, and reconsidered the resolutions of the conservatives. The name of Locofoco, however, is now applied to the whole party; for, to the Whigs, every against the tyrant, the people against the despot." The Abolitionists proper, the "Garrisonmen," are a less numerous, but energetic party; they denounce slavery in the scriptural language of the prophets, which is not entirely parlia mentary. Democrat is a firebrand. The thorough-going, | side of the weak against the strong, the slave liberal Democrats got, therefore, in New York, another name- viz., Barnburners, from a phrase of one of their orators, who said that they must burn the barns in order to expel the rats; in Maine, they are called Wildcats. The Softshells form the transition between the Hunkers and Barnburners- they are half-and-halfs; whilst the Hardshell Hunkers are the most con servative party in the world, averse to every social and intellectual movement. During our stay in the United States a new party distinction arose amongst the Democrats Young America, comprising all the ardent and generous minds of the party, in opposition to the Old Fogies, as the professional politicians were called by them. From this delineation of the parties and the politics of the United States, it will be seen that, with the exception of the slavery question, there is hardly a question of internal American politics that does not belong to a region of practical interests far in advance of those in which most other nations have still the misery to be entangled. While many The conservative Whigs, the Fillmore men, are European nations are struggling for the first termed Silver greys, as one of their chiefs, when elements of liberty, such as free government. attacked for his clinging to the old statesmen, freedom of the press, open trial according to who had devised the Fugitive Slave Bill as a com- law, and the like, while even England has the promise between the South and the North, ex-five-barred gate of the suffrage and other simiclaimed, that he remained rather a private lar obstacles yet to clear, America is career amongst the Silvergreys, than a leader amongst the Woolly-heads. Those Woolly-heads, or Seward-men, are the Liberals amongst the Whigs, and got their origin in the political struggle about the compromise. They are opposed to the territorial extension of slavery; they wish to remove slavery from the pale of general legislation, therefore they endeavor to have it abolished in the District of Columbia and the territories; and they made a strong opposition against the Fugitive Slave Law, because it did not secure a trial by jury to the defendant. They agree in respect to this question entirely with the Freesoilers, who belonged originally to the Democrats, but had seceded from them in 1848, whilst the Seward party remained in communion with the Whigs, in spite of the platform of 1852. Instead of forming a separate organization, they endeavor to carry their theories by getting first a majority for them in the party itself. This example was followed lately by many of the Democratic bolters of 1848, amongst whom we notice the originators of the name and party, Martin and John Van Buren. But some of the original Freesoilers remained beyond the pale of the Whigs and Democrats, and were reinforced by many noble-hearted men, principally in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, who do not care for momentary success. They called themselves at first the Libertyparty, and got in Massachusetts the balance of power in their hands; but knowing the force of names, they constituted themselves, at the late convention at Pittsburgh, as Free Democracy. Their creed is given in the resolution of the Boston Ratification Meeting:- "Resolved That no man on this earth can own another man; that the slave power in this country must be destroyed; that the Fugitive Slaw Law should be repealed; that human bondage in the territories and in the district (Columbia) should be abol ished; that all the new States should be free States; that our government should acknowledge the independence of Hayti; that the rights of American colored citizens in every State ought to be protected; that the general government is a great organization of freedom, and should go for it everywhere; that it should always be on the ing away far ahead among questions which she seems almost to create for the purpose of continued parliamentary exercise. That she makes such a fuss with these questions, raising clouds of dust, and filling columns of newspapers, and having periodical combinations of her Hunkers and the like against her Silvergreys and the like, and even fighting duels, and trying libel cases in the interest of Homestead Bills, and Improvement Bills, and all the thousand-and-one little controversies that arise out of liability of the federal gov ernment to collision with the rights of the States is not, however, to be regarded as a waste of energy, or of time. These chance to be the questions of the day in America; and there is no more healthful thing for a community then the incessant discussion by all and sundry in that community of the questions of the day, whatever they are, and their willing cooperation, as citizens, with a view to settle them in the most sagacious possible manner. Were the Americans to cease from this display of political activity, and to sink into the condition of happy listlessness which their position, as a nation that has already conquered for itself all the prime liberties of humanity, might permit, they would be untrue even to their own interests, and the tide of retrogression would set in apace. Still, however, it remains emphatically true of America that it is the country of the greatest amount of political palaver and political aptitude, with the smallest reserve of purely domestic opportunities for the exercise of what is properly called statecraft. America is rapidly nearing that goal of no-government, of the absolute independence of the social atoms of any control on the part of the social mass as a whole, which is described by theorists as the ultimatum to which all human society is tending. Three questions alone seem at present to interpose between America and a state of which have most seriously disturbed public transheer dissipation of her political energy among quillify. If the federal government will confine such social minutiæ as indicate the approach itself to the exercise of power clearly granted by to an era of no-government; three questions the constitution, it can hardly happen that its alone seem yet to afford her opportunities for action upon any question should endanger the the display of statesmanship as distinct from institutions of the States, or interfere with their mere local activity in public meetings and right to manage matters strictly domestic accordcommittees. These are, first, the question of ing to the will of their own people. no-government itself in its practical aspects; secondly, the slavery question; and, thirdly, the question of international relations. There president as even to disallow to the central government one of the prerogatives specially reserved for it by the constitution. By the constitution, the central government alone has the right of making peace or war; but we are mistaken if there are not Democrats who would claim this right, in some cases, for the separate States while it is not only in the case of the Lopez invasion of Cuba that evidence has been afforded of a disposition on the part of the Americans to arrogate the right of military enterprise to any private association of individuals who may have conquest or colonization in view. as compared with what a Whig president This is not very precise; but, on the whole, I. The Question of Government or No-Gov- occasion, it is a declaration in favor of the would have been expected to say on a similar ernment. This is specially an American ques- limitation of the powers of the central governtion. No other country in the world has ment within the narrowest circle marked out arrived at such a stage of progress as to re- by the constitution of the republic. quire its being entertained, or even to suggest is one point, we believe, in which many the possibility of its being made a question. Democrats would go so much farther than the But in America it is constantly presenting itself in the form of disputes as to the limits which separate the rights of the federation from the rights of the individual States. From this, one step in descent will lead to the question as to the limits between State rights and municipal rights. In this standing controversy the Whigs are on the side of government, the Democrats on the side of nogovernment. The Whigs are for increasing the powers of the central government they would authorize it to act as a kind of independent thinking organ for the nation at large, surveying the condition of the nation, and planting here and there over its surface a new institution, or a social improvement, for the accomplishment of any end that might scem desirable. The Democrats, on the other hand, would rather diminish than increase the powers of the central government, which they regard as properly fulfilling only a kind of negative function within the nation, that of preventing any interference with the spontaneous development of the people. On the whole, the Democrats seem to have gained the day; and the following passage from the Washington Address of their nominee, President Pierce, may pass as a guarded declaration of the sentiments now professed by the bulk of the American people on the point under notice. The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours, are too obvious to be disregarded. You have a right, therefore, to expect your agents, in every department, to regard strictly the limits imposed upon them by the constitution of the United States. The great scheme of our constitutional liberty rests upon a proper distribution of power between the State and Federal authorities; and experience has shown that the harmony and happiness of our people must depend upon a just discrimination between the separate rights and responsibilities of the States, and your common rights and obligations under the general government. And here, in my opinion, are the considerations which should form the true basis of future concord in regard to the questions II. The Slavery Question. This is a question which will one day shake American society to the foundations, and the issues of which will have a cosmopolitan interest. At refused to make it a political question, and, present, however, America has distinctly under cover of the general declaration that the central government is precluded by the constitution from tampering with the domestic interests of the several States, has referred the question back into the vague category of unripe social problems. General Pierce's expressions of opinion on this subject are distinct and unmistakable. I believe that involuntary servitude, as it exists in different States of this confederacy, is recognized by the constitution. I believe that it stands like any other admitted right, and that the States where it exists are entitled to efficient remedies to enforce the constitutional provisions. I hold that the laws of 1850, commonly called the "Compromise Measures," are strictly constitutional, and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect. I believe that the constituted authorities of this republic are bound to regard the rights of the south in this respect, as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions, as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully, and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs. Such have been Annexation within and are my convictions, and upon them I shall summed up in two words the New World; Interference in behalf of Such are the words of the Democratic president; but, if a Whig had been in his place, the declaration on the slavery question would not have been a whit different. In the Whig" platform," put forth in reference to the last presidential election, there was a clause to this effect: "We deprecate all future agitation of the slavery question as dangerous to our peace, and we will discountenance all efforts at the renewal or continuance of such agitation in Congress or out of it, whenever, wherever, or howsoever the attempt may be made, and will maintain this system of measures as policy essential to the nationality of the Whig party, and the integrity of the Union." Thus both of the great American parties alike drive back the slavery question into the limbo of mere social adjournments. It will probably not be on the political arena, therefore, or at least not there for a long time to come, that the question will be fought. But fought the question must be. An anomaly so huge cannot exist in any portion of human society, without the elements themselves being in a state of unrest all round it; and it is perhaps a providential fact for America herself, that, in her dearth of all ordinary domestic provocatives to the grief of great statesmanship, she still retains this stain on her conscience, this canker in her heart. It is the apparent destination of the American Republic to become coëxtensive with at least the whole northern half of the American continent. Such space as is blank and unclaimed as yet by any other government, the Americans are rapidly overrunning Oregon, California, and the Mormon settlements lying between these outposts and the States proper, are the first patches over a surface yet to be covered. The elastic constitution of the Union will permit the ready recognition as States of the new societies which start up in this region; -to add a new State to the Union is but to add a star to the national banner. But even where the ground is already claimed and covered -as in the case of Mexico, of the Canadas, and of Cuba-the same tendency to territorial extension is evident. In vain have eminent statesmen and moralists protested against the policy of annexation. It is a popular instinct, coincident with wide-spread individual interest; and the very peculiarity of the United States consists in this, that, as the people is both sovereign and accustomed to the use of arms, anything that the people, or a considerable portion of them, have set their hearts on, will either be authorized by the government, or done in the face of the government by private association. Americans squatted in Texas, and the American government was obliged to annex Texas. And so also with regard to Cuba. There are three stages in the process for annexing this island - private enterprise discountenanced by the government, private enterprise authorized by the government, and public enterprise led by the government. The first stage of the process is probably over the death of Lopez finished it; and we shall probably see the policy of annexation go through the other two. That Cuba will be annexed there is no manner of doubt. The following passage from President Pierce's Washington Address is none the less significant that it is somewhat obscure : III. The Question of International Relations. This is the great question which makes the American republic indubitably the most important nation in the world in a cosmopolitical point of view. The question breaks itself into two the question of the relations of the republic to those portions of the New World which at present lie out of the limits of the confederacy; and the question of the relations of the republic to the nations of the Old World. In regard to both these questions, the America of to-day is a very different thing from the America of Washington and ing, the policy of my administration will not be With an experience thus suggestive and cheerJefferson. The legacy of these men to the controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from republic over whose infant fortunes they expansion. Indeed, it is not to be disguised presided, consisted in an earnest dissuasive that our attitude as a nation, and our position from two things-war for the purposes of on the globe, render the acquisition of certain territorial extension within the American possessions, not within our jurisdiction, emicontinent; and interference with the politics nently important for our protection, if not, in the of the European nations. America has now future, essential for the preservation of the flung aside these maxims as a full-grown rights of commerce and the peace of the world. child repudiates leading-strings. In vain has Whiggism striven to preserve some faint lingering of respect for such maxims; Democracy is now, and we believe finally, triumphant; and the mind of American Democracy, in reference to international politics, is Should they be obtained, it will be through no grasping spirit, but with a view to obvious national interest and security, and in a manner entirely consistent with the strict observance of | national faith. Here there is no direct mention of Cuba, but, in one way or another, Cuba will very soon belong to the American Republic. Nor is it probable that this will be the only annexation. Any desirable territory which the government cannot get ceded to it by international arrangement, needs only to be lighted on by a cloud of volunteers from a nation all the citizens of which are sovereigns; and, in the end, the government, however reluctant, will be obliged to back these volunteers, and legitimize whatever they do. for the compulsory propagation of her own principles of equality and freedom. There are but three steps in the process -- first, volunteer enterprise discountenanced by government; next, volunteer enterprise authorized by government; next, a national crusade with government at its head. How near we are to such an assumption by America of the greatest cosmopolitical function that can devolve upon a nation it is difficult to say. One thing is clear that Kossuth's visit to America has been productive of immense effects. Direct assistance in the And so, in the relations of America with the politics of the Old World. In Great Britain, where the government, though theo-way of arms or money he seems to have retically representative of the people, is in received but in small measure; but this, at reality a distinct agglomeration of sentiment least, may be said that, when he landed in and will, against which the general sentiment America the mind of the nation was full of of the people fumes and breaks, with power the Whig sentiment of non-interference, and to modify and alter, but not to dissolve or that when he left it the American mind was annihilate, it—there may very well exist a full of the notion of its cosmopolitical funcuniversal popular sympathy with the cause tion. We do not think that, prior to Kosof oppressed freedom on the continent; and yet suth's visit to America, such language as the that sympathy may receive the faintest possible following would have been used by an Amerexpression when translated through the rec-ican president: ognized organs of international action. But in America it is different. There, if the mass Of the complicated European systems of of the people are really interested in the national polity we have heretofore been indecause of struggling European freedom, they pendent. From their wars, their tumults and have only to associate to carry their sympa- anxieties, we have been, happily, almost entirely thies into practical results. They may sub-exempt. While these are confined to the nations scribe money, or contribute arms to assist the which gave them existence, and within their patriots; they may even organize a volunteer legitimate jurisdiction, they cannot affect us, expedition of American rifles, and steam except as they appeal to our sympathies in the cause of human freedom and universal advanceacross the Atlantic on a mission of propa- ment. But the vast interests of commerce are gandist warfare. Government might frown, common to all mankind, and the advantages of but were the enterprise based on a sufficiently trade and international intercourse must always extensive popular feeling, it could do nothing present a noble field for the moral influence of but hold back for a while, and then submit. a great people. With these views firmly and Such development has the system of volunteer honestly carried out, we have a right to expect, warfare received in America that we verily and shall under all circumstances require, believe that, if it could be shown that the prompt reciprocity. The rights which belong to enfranchisement of Italy or Hungary by us as a nation are not alone to be regarded, but American arms would pay as a speculation, those which pertain to every citizen in his indithe contract would be taken to-morrow by an vidual capacity, at home and abroad, must be American firm, and all the stock subscribed sacredly maintained. So long as he can discern for in a day or two at New York or New every star in its place upon that ensign, without Orleans. Were the island of Sicily, for ex- to secure for him place, it will be his privilege, wealth to purchase for him preferment, or title ample, made over to an association of Ameri- and must be his acknowledged right, to stand can citizens, on condition of their enfranchis- unabashed even in the presence of princes, with ing the rest of Italy, and setting it up as an a proud consciousness that he is himself one of independent republic, who shall say the a nation of sovereigns, and that he cannot, in thing might not be done? The Americans legitimate pursuit, wander so far from home are a nation of sovereigns; they are also a that the agent whom he shall leave behind in nation trained to the use of arms; and the the place which I now occupy, will not see that very theory of central government in America no rude hand of power or tyrannical passion is is, that what the people desire, it shall not laid upon him with impunity. He must realize prevent them from carrying out. Whenever, that, upon every sea and on every soil, where our therefore, whether for the purposes of gain or enterprise may rightfully seek the protection of our flag, American citizenship is an inviolable of philanthropy, the American people, or a panoply for the security of American rights. great mass of them, are desirous of actively And, in this connection, it can hardly be bestirring themselves in behalf of political necessary to reaffirm a principle which should freedom in the Old World, America is on the now be regarded as fundamental. The rights, verge of asserting her cosmopolitical impor- security, and repose of this confederacy reject tance by a direct crusade among the nations the idea of interference or colonization, on this |