Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/11



. I.

presenting to the public the first number of "The American Review," it will not be inappropriate to set forth the reasons that have led to its establishment. This is not because custom has made it proper, or that the public have a right to expect from each new actor a preliminary bow; but mainly because the reasons themselves are of weighty and earnest import. They arise on different grounds, and present their appeal by different considerations; but the result from them all is a united voice that speaks to the American people.

The predominant interests of our countrymen are involved in the issue of great and often-recurring political contests. These contests are always of prevailing concern, at times all-absorbing; and the leading intellects of the country, so long as our institutions shall happily remain free, must be largely devoted to the discussion of questions pertaining to the management of the national government. As the country progresses in extent and increases in population and wealth, these questions are becoming more varied and complicated. The necessity for new measures, and for the enlarged application of established principles to meet the exigencies of the times, demands constant action on the part of those to whom the people have committed their most sacred interests; and the formation of parties taking antagonistical positions on these matters is a necessary result, aside from the inducements to division arising from personal ambition, cupidity, and love of place and power, which are found mixed up with all human affairs. Of such organizations, numerously existing or constantly springing up, the greater part are indeed of a local nature, or grow out of temporary excitements: two, however, embrace nearly all the rest, and mainly divide the couimonwealth.

These great organizations are born of different elements, exist by different means and in a ditferent atmosphere. In every thing of vital concern, their relation, by principles, policy, practice, is that of natural, unavoidable opposition.

The one is in all things essentially conservative, and at the same time is the real parly of progress and improvement. It commends itself to the people, and is supported by them, not less for its rigid adherence to the Republican creed—for its unwavering support of constitutional and established rights, and its endeavors to preserve law, liberty, and order inviolate—than for the ameliorating and liberalizing tendency of its principles and policy. Such is that portion of the community who have justly adopted from the men of the Revolution the ever-honored title of. In ail that tends to give strength to the confederacy, and knit together its various sections by the indissoluble bands of a common interest and