Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/130

116 and the magical elevation of Mr. Polk,—a man entirely inconsiderable before this event, and whom his recent fortunes cannot be said to have rendered any thing more than notorious. Apply for a moment to this proceeding the discrimination which we have above attempted to draw between the distinctive features of a party and a faction, and say whether this quiet substitution of candidates was not the act of the latter. What principle of the genuine democracy was not outraged both in the act itself and in the mode of its accomplishment? Pledges were scattered to the wind—the will of the majority supplanted by concerted fraud—and the "martyr to Democratic principles" overwhelmed with contumely. Why was all this? If this band of politicians represented an honest party, having principles and proposing measures valuable to the commonwealth, who so fit an exponent of them, who so skillful an administrator of them, as Martin Van Buren? No, it was the vile work of a faction, which knew no motive and sought no end beyond its own triumph. The Ex-President had some political history, some political principles, some political responsibility hanging about him—there was bone and muscle, there were qualities and tendencies in him, and they might interfere with the scheme of running Democracy in the abstract. But that the whole cause and object of this management might not be left to argument or inference, that it might not be said that any repugnance was felt to Mr. Van Buren's principles, or his personal connections, Silas Wright, the mirror of the one and the most ultimate of the other, is immediately nominated for the Vice-Presidency. Does not, then, this transaction sustain the charge, that our opponents entered upon the campaign, with an entire abnegation of every thing but the success of the faction, and that they did this without caring to conceal the deformity of their designs with the thin veil of hypocrisy.

The foul marks of faction are not less deeply imprinted upon the management of all questions of public policy and of fundamental principle, by the Democrats, throughout the whole period of the late contest.

The Sub-Treasury, that shrewd project of finance, by which the "progress party" would throw our money system some several centuries backward; that golden-calf of Democracy, at whose shrine its selectest priesthood were wont to minister, and its haughtiest votaries to kneel; whose mystic name was erst the Shibboleth, and its "specie clause" the touchstone of the true, unadulterate faith; how, we say, did the scheme of Democracy in the absractabstract [sic] deal with this matter? The idol, like Dagon in the house of the Philistines, "had fallen upon his face to the ground," and the foot-prints of the pilgrims to its altar were all reversed, as if in hasty flight Throughout the length and breadth of the land its name was not heard; there was "none so poor to do it reverence"; there was not virtue enough left in it even to conjure with. Has, then, the infallible spirit of Democracy spoken false oracles? Has its wisdom become folly in its own eyes? Was this suppression of the Sub-Treasury, during the canvass, an honest renunciation of an error, and was its reinstatement as sincerely abandoned as its discussion was peremptorily forbidden? Here again we are saved the labor of argument, and spared the doubt of inference. They have made haste to enact, what they were slow to discuss, and in that branch of Congress in which they have the power, the re-establishment of this same Sub-Treasury is the sole result of its exercise, and the accredited "organ of concentrated Democratic sentiment" claims the late election decisive in its verdict of popular opinion upon this point alone, of prime importance,—a point not mooted in the trial. Is the course which this matter has taken, the upright action of a party, or the impudent juggle of a faction?

The adverse policies of a protective tariff and unrestricted freedom of trade are the most important which can divide a commercial people, and upon these, long before the actual collision of the parties in the contest, it had become manifest the fight, if an honest one, was mainly to be made. It was well known, too, that, however the independent militia of the hostile army might straggle, all the "Chivalry" on this point were united and puissant. The stupendous forces of the great kingdom of South Carolina could be drawn from their armed neutrality only by a most stringent covenant on this head. The noble leader of our own array had fought his way up from the ranks to his exalted post, mahily in the service of the American system. This warfare had been to him, what the Italian campaigns were to Napoleon—the