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    PREPARATIONS FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

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    Untitled Article

    Joseph is incapable of understanding that integrity cannot thrive in 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 hi 3 own throne . Would that all despots were as usefully employed !

    Untitled Article

    I F 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 treasuiy . 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

    meanwhile , complain that the conduct of this Committee is partial and unjust . . The Senate has , besides , a capital opportunity for makino- " Buncombe" speeches afforded it by certain resolutions against abolitionism offered by a fire-eating seriator , one Mr . Jefferson Davis , so that altogether both Houses manage to ventilate 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 fi ° 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 sedt 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 * , a competitor of their own standing . - ¦ . T- 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 , Mr . SetVarp is the onfy candidate of note ; it seems doubtful , however , whether the whether could

    party can unite around him , and still more so they 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 pm-pose , therefore , is the man , let him be ever so

    stupid , with whom it can wirrthe 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 threatened to take in case of defeat . The decision one way or other of the question whether Congress has the r ight 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 thai they can get no protection for their property in the territories , will take care to keep the " chattels" at home , and all r isk ol 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 thorn than they can build a 1

    br idge of dry land to Cuba . But if , through tho adoption oIthis bullying tone , they succeed in defeating the Republicans , the whole Union becomes tho 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 clement . If beaten in this

    contest , the fanaticism will gvow more rampant , and overcome the judgment and statesmanship which have hitherto moderated its counsels , If it succeeds now and gains power , the moderate

    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 liberally provide them .. ~ This chronic peculiarity of Congress has been especially exemplified this year . Mr JCovode ' 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 . - Ihe 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 inqmiyy ^ n-wJiichjw ^ -coinmente d a fort iiighL since ,, was referred . The President has been hoisted with his own petard , lie contended that the changes against him should hjave 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 favouj ^^—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 ' do a little of the same seemingly

    necessary business , pnd 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 thd » Harper ' s l ^ erry outbreak , tho 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 cu » , 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 tho 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 ,

    Untitled Article

    416 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ May 5 , I 860 .

    Preparations For The Presidential Election.

    PREPARATIONS FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 5, 1860, page 416, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2346/page/4/