V.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FREE SOIL PARTY, AND THE ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR. DECEMBER, 1848.

THE people of the United States have just chosen an officer, who, for the next four years, will have more power than any monarch of Europe; yet three years ago he was scarcely known out of the army in Florida, and even now has appeared only in the character of a successful general. His supporters at the North intend, by means of his election, to change the entire commercial policy of the country, and perhaps, also, its financial policy; they contemplate, or profess to contemplate, a great change. Yet the election has been effected without tumult or noise; not a soldier has drawn his bayonet; scarcely has a constable needed his official rod to keep order withal. In Europe, at the same time, the beginning of a change in the national dynasty or the national policy is only attempted by violence, by soldiers with arms ready for fight, by battle and murder. One day or another, men will be wise enough to see the cause of this difference, and insular statesmen in England, who now sneer at the new government in America, may learn that democracy has at least one quality that of respecting law and order, and may live to see ours the oldest government in the whole Caucasian race.

Since the election is now over, it is worth while to look a

moment at the politics and political parties of the country, that we may gain wisdom for the future, and perhaps hope; at any rate, may see the actual condition of things. Each political party is based on an Idea, which corresponds to a Truth, or an Interest. It commonly happens that the idea is represented as an interest, and the interest as an idea, before either becomes the foundation of a large party. Now when a new idea is introduced to any party, or applied to any institution, if it be only auxiliary to the old doctrines incarnated therein, a regular growth and new development take place; but when the new idea is hostile to the old, the development takes place under the form of a revolution, and that will be greater or less in proportion to the difference between the new idea and the old doctrine; in proportion to their relative strength and value. As Aristotle said of seditions, a revolution comes on slight occasions, but not of slight causes; * the occasion may be obvious and obviously trivial, but the cause obscure and great. The occasion of the French Revolution of 1848 was afforded by the attempt of the king to prevent a certain public dinner: he had a legal right to prevent it. The cause of the Revolution was a little different; but some men in America and England, at first, scarcely looked beyond the occasion, and, taking that for the cause, thought the Frenchmen fools to make so much ado about a trifle, and that they had better eat their soupe maigre at home, and let their victuals stop their mouths. The occasion of the American Revolution may be found in the Stamp-Act, or the Sugar-Act, the Writs of Assistance, or the Boston Port-Bill; some men, even now, see no further, and logically conclude the colonists made a mistake, because for a dozen years they were far worse off than before the " Rebellion," and have never been so lightly taxed since. Such men do not see the cause

* Γίγνονται μὲν οὖν αἱ στάσεις οὗ περὶ μικρῶν ἀλλ' ἐκ μικρῶν, στασιáčovoi dè ñeqi peɣúλwr. — Aristotle's Polit., Lib. V. Chap. 4, § 1.

of the Revolution, which was not an unwillingness to pay taxes, but a determination to govern themselves.

At the present day it is plain that a revolution, neither slow nor silent, is taking place in the political parties of America. The occasion thereof is the nomination of a man for the presidency who has no political or civil experience, but who has three qualities that are important in the eyes of the leading men who have supported and pushed him forward: one is, that he is an eminent slaveholder, whose interests and accordingly whose ideas are identical with those of the slaveholders; the next, that he is not hostile to the doctrines of northern manufacturers respecting a protective tariff; and the third, that he is an eminent and very successful military commander. The last is an accidental quality, and it is not to be supposed that the intelligent and influential men at the North and South who have promoted his election, value him any more on that account, or think that mere military success fits him for his high office, and enables him to settle the complicated difficulties of a modern State. They must know better; but they must have known that many men of little intelligence are so taken with military glory that they will ask for no more in their hero; it was foreseen, also, that honest and intelligent men of all parties would give him their vote because he had never been mixed up with the intrigues of political life. Thus "far-sighted" politicians of the North and South saw that he might be fairly elected, and then might serve the purposes of the slaveholder, or the manufacturer of the North. The military success of General Taylor, an accidental merit, was only the occasion of his nomination by the whigs; his substantial merit was found in the fact, that he was supposed, or known, to be favorable to the "peculiar institution" of the South and the protective policy of the manufacturers at the North: this was the cause of his formal nomination by the Whig Convention of Philadelphia, and his real nomination by members of the

whig party at Washington. The men of property at the South wanted an extension of slavery; the men of property at the North, a high protective tariff; and it was thought General Taylor could serve both purposes, and promote the interests of the North and South.

Such is the occasion of the revolution in political parties: the cause is the introduction of a new idea into these parties entirely hostile to some of their former doctrines. In the electioneering contest, the new idea was represented by the words “Free Soil." For present practice it takes a negative form: "No more Slave States, no more Slave Territory," is the motto. But these words and this motto do not adequately represent the idea, only so much thereof as has been needful in the present crisis.

Before now there has been much in the political history. of America to provoke the resentment of the North. England has been ruled by various dynasties; the American chair has been chiefly occupied by the Southern House, the Dynasty of Slaveholders: now and then a member of the Northern House has sat on that seat, but commonly it has been a "Northern man with Southern principles,” never a man with mind to see the great idea of America, and will to carry it out in action. Still the spirit of liberty has not died out of the North; the attempt to put an eighth slaveholder in the chair of "The model republic," gave

occasion for that spirit to act again.

The new idea is not hostile to the distinctive doctrine of either political party; neither to free trade, nor to protection; so it makes no revolution in respect to them: it is neutral, and leaves both as it found them. It is not hostile to the general theory of the American State, so it makes no revolution there; this idea is assumed as self-evident, in the Declaration of Independence. It is not inimical to the theory of the Constitution of the United States, as set forth in the preamble thereto, where the design of the Constitution is declared to be "To form a more perfect union, establish

justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

There are clauses in the Constitution, which are exceptions to this theory, and hostile to the design mentioned above; to such, this idea will one day prove itself utterly at variance, as it is now plainly hostile to one part of the practice of the American government, and that of both the parties.

We have had several political parties since the Revolution: the federalists, and anti-federalists, the latter shading off into republicans, democrats, and locofocos; the former tapering into modern whigs, in which guise some of their fathers would scarcely recognize the family type. We have had a protective party and an anti-protective party; once there was a free-trade party, which no longer appears in politics. There has been a National Bank party, which seems to have gone to the realm of things lost on earth. In the rise and fall of these parties, several dramas, tragic and comic, have been performed on the American boards, where "One man in his time plays many parts," and stout representatives of the Hartford Convention find themselves on the same side with worshippers of the Gerrymander, and shouting the same cry. It is kindly ordered that memory should be so short, and brass so common. None of the old parties is likely to return; the living have buried the dead. "We are all federalists," said Mr. Jefferson, “we are all democrats," and truly, so far as old questions are concerned. It is well known that the present representatives of the old federal party, have abjured the commercial theory of their predecessors; and the men who were "Jacobins" at the beginning of the century, curse the new French Revolution by their gods. At the presidential election of 1840, there were but two parties in the field - democrats and whigs. As they both survive, it is well to see what interests or what ideas they represent.