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    4ie The Leader and Saturday Analyst. [Ma...

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    Joseph is incapable of understanding tli...

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    PREPARATIONS FOR. THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECT...

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    4ie The Leader And Saturday Analyst. [Ma...

    4 ie The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Mat 5 , I 860 .

    Joseph Is Incapable Of Understanding Tli...

    Joseph is incapable of understanding tliat integrity cannot thrive an a malaria of Jesuitry and tyranny ; and this judicial blindness ' may cause 4 iim to be the most useful Emperor Austria has had for many generations . He will not wait for the shock of another war or revolution—he is his own worm , busily gnawing to pieces the props of his own throne . Would that all despots were as usefully employed !

    Preparations For. The Presidential Elect...

    PREPARATIONS FOR . THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION . IF our American cousins were quite as " cute" as they profess to be they would give Congress a holiday every fourth year . The work that honourable body does in the session which precedes each presidential election is not worth the " compensation " its members draw from the public treasmy . Senate and House of Representatives cease then to be legislative assemblies , and the floors of both houses become scenes of electioneering manoeuvres , the performers in which are paid by the people . Little inconvenience would be sustained , except by the professional politicians , from such a quadrennial fallow time . The Government has now solved , in the case of the post-office , the problem how to do without an Appropriation Bill , and the dignity of the Legislature would be considerably raised by its withdrawal for a whole year from the public view . Indeed , if the framers of the Constitution had all . possessed the foresight of Hamilton , who predicted that the day would come when every vital interest of the State would be merged in the question of who will be the next President , they would probably have inserted in it some proviso for such a Congressional interregnum . As , however , they did not , and an attempt to amend the Constitution would be a very dangerous step in the-present , temper of North and South , good citizens must take their money out in the fun and scandal-with which their representatives so liberaUy provide them . "

    This chronic peculiarity of Congress has been especially - ¦ exemplified this year . MtJCovode ' s Committee of Inquiry into the malpractices , of the President , for instance , can only be described as an electioneering dodge . "Mr . Buchanan had , no doubt , mixed himself up in some transactions which would not - bear too close a scrutiny , but the object of the majority of the , " House was not to clear away abuses or punish for corruption an officer who , after next March , will merely be a superannuated politician about whom nobody cares a farthing . - The aim was to throw a discredit on the Democratic party , which would tell in the coming election . If any doubt could have existed on this point it would be dispelled by the majority report- of the Judiciary Committee , to which the President's special message protesting against the inquiry , on which we commented a fortnight since , was referred . The President has been hoisted with his own petard , lie contended that tlie changes against him should lvave been referred to the Judiciary Committee iu the first instance ; his message , has been referred to that Committee , and the majority report very strongly against his contentions—very strongly in words , but very weakly in other respects , the report being singularly destitute of logijc , as well as of the gravity and impartiality which should characterize such . a Committee , and surcharged , moreover , with taunts and sneers at the President . The minority report , on the other hand—which , as emanating from his partisans , is , of course , equally strong in his favou ^ r—has the merits of lucid argumentation and a becoming style , ' putting the President's positions in a much better form than / he had put them himself , and saying all that could be said fordiim . The merits of the case have , however , nothing to do with the squabble . The President has employed his patronage to aid party projects , more scandalously , perhaps , than any of his predecessors ; but the Republicans are very much maligned if they don't do a little of the same seemingly necessary business , and they will leave Mr . Buchanan alone as soon as any other plan of annoying their opponents strikes them . Whilst the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has thus been electioneering , the Democratic majority of the Senate has been equally active on its side . Mr . Mason , of Virginia , obtained , at the commencement of the session , the appointment of a Committee to inquire " into t \\& Harper ' s Ferry outbreak , the terms of the resolution extending to an inquiry whether any citizens of the United States favoured in any way the project . . The object of Mr . Mason is , of course , to prove , if he euu , that the leading members of the Republican party were privy to the " invasion , " and thus to increase the ill impression which the affair , in its general aspect , created against them . He has , however , met with considerable difficulties , from the refusal of witnesses to attend , and , although the Senate has power to compel that attendance , some of the parties have contrived , by suing out writs of habeas corpus in their respective states , and the active sympathies of mobs of citizens , to get away from the Federal officers sent after them . The Republicans , 11 >'

    meanwhile , complain that the conduct of this Committee is partial and unjust . -The Senate has , besides , a capital opportunity for makin ^ " Buncombe" speeches afforded it by certain resolutions against abolitionism ottered by a fire-eating seriator , one Mr . Jefferson Davis , so that altogether both Houses manage toventilate the presidential question pretty freely . But the day of Congress is now over . Senators and representatives may be as startlingly eloquent as they please ; public attention is turned in other directions . Nothing short of a " free fio-ht" on the floor of either House , in which both sides had their tale of killed and wounded , would draw back to the Capitol that interest which now centres in Charleston , and will soon pass to Chicago . Charleston is , this year , the seat of the Democratic Convention , at which the candidate of the party for the Presidency will be selected . The Convention was to " organize" on the 23 rd of April , but a fortnight might perhaps elapse before one of the aspirants would obtain the requisite majority . The delegates are already counted for one man or other ; but all such reckonings are fallacious . Probably enough all the aspirants who have any claims on the score of talent and public services to the honour may be discarded , and some insignificant person chosen upon whom it is possible to unite the suffrages of all divisions of the party . This is the great danger which Mr . Douglas , undoubtedly ., the most able of the candidates , runs . He has opposed Mr . Buchanan's policy in several instances , so he has against him all the present President ' s creatures ; and by his conduct on the Kaiisas question he greatly angered the pro-Slavery party , although he has recently been approximating somewhat to them . Mr . Hunter , of Virginia , is spoken of as possessing a good chance . He is , like Mr . Douglas , a member of the Senate , and so far a not inexperienced politician . The probability , however , is , that both will be thrown over , and some unknown man selected , whose obscurity will be preferred by all the candidates to the elevation of , ^ competitor of their own standing . - ^ ^

    The Republican Convention does not meet until the end of May . The delegates will therefore have the advantage of knowing who _ their opponent is , and consequently will be able to select the man best fitted to fight him ; - At present , Mi \ SeWard is the ' Only candidate of note ; it seems doubtful , however , whether ther party can Unite around him , and still more so whether they could . carry him . His past services and his great abilities entitle him to the honour ; but he is , perhaps , too well known , and too pronounced an anti-Slavery man , for a party which must rely . upon the divisions in and defections from the ranks of its opponents to fight ' with . The object of each party is not to put the best man in the office , but to gain the victory for itself . The man for its purpose , therefore , is the man , let him be ever so stupid , with whom it can win the game . The issue to be determined in the approaching presidential contest is perhaps the most important presented to the people of the United S ' tates since the establishment of their present form of Government . Its importance does not lie , however , so much in the question in dispute between the parties , but in the course which one of those parties has thi'eatened to take in case of defeat . The decision one way or other of the question whether Congress has the right and the obligation to prohibit Slavery in the territories of the United States would certainly not in itself provoke any great convulsion . If it is decided that Congress has not that power , that every citizen has a right to take his slaves , just like any other property , into any territory , and that he must be protected in that right against all Congressional or territorial legislation by the judicial and executive branches of the Government , then the existing state of things is prolonged , and the slaveholders have still the chance of getting a new slave state to balance the free ones soon to be admitted . If it is decided that Congress has that power , then the slave-owners , knowing that they can get no protection for their property in the territories , will take care to keep the " chattels" at home , and all risk of collision would appear to be avoided . But the ^ ro-Slavery leaders have threatened a dissolution of the Union if a Republican President be elected , and if one of that party be not elected it will bo owing mainly to the influence of those swaggering threats . They can really no more execute them than they can build a bridge of dry land to Cuba . But if , through tho adoption ol' this bullying tone , they succeed in defeating the Republicans , the whole Union becomes the serf of a section , until some violent reaction takes place , in which the slaveholders are overborne by an extreme . party which assuredly will not be very cautious or temperate in the hour of its triumph . ' Although one cause of . tho strength , it is now the great difficulty of the Republican party'that it includes so much of the . fanatical element . If beaten iu this contest , the fanaticism will gvow more rampant , and overcome the judgment and statesmanship which have hitherto moderated its cQunsela , If it succeeds now and gains power , the moderate .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 5, 1860, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05051860/page/4/