in which the conditions of American statesmanship
enable hordes of needy and unprincipled
adventurers to speculate. These men fill at a
presidential contest the election committees,
which name delegates for the convention that has
to choose a party candidate. The members of
the party convention come from sections of the
country widely apart, and with diverse interests.
Every man of ability has by his vigorous action
on some question offended this or that section.
Ballot follows ballot, and the lot falls at last on
the man who is too insignificant to have made
enemies. The work of a presidential election is
thus done by two opposing packs of place-
hunters, each in full cry, and the pack that runs
down its game demands immediately after to be
fed. The greed of office by the noisiest political
adventurers, and the consequent insecurity of
office in place-holders, confines the desire, and
secures too commonly the rewards, of place to the
least worthy, to hungry men eager, especially
during their short tenure of official life, to thrive by
the plunder that every honest statesman of the
North has during the present year had loudly to
deplore. In the Chicago manifesto, a creed of
the Northern party, we read censure of "the
reckless extravagance which pervades every
department of the Federal government," of "the
systematic plunder of the public treasury by
favoured partisans," and of "the recent startling
developments of fraud and corruption at the
Federal capital." The lobbies of the legislative
halls are thronged with agents who, by appeal to
the self-interest of members, undertake to work
private bills through congress. A needy
political adventurer, who has become a paid
legislator at three or four dollars a day, and is
required to live at the present scale of social
extravagance, is, as every American legislator
knows, and as members are constantly reminded
in the course of debate, open to the influence of
what is called "lobbying." He goes to market
with his duty to his country. And from a house
so constituted, all the ministers are required to
be absent. They are not there to inform the
representatives of the people, or to be made
answerable to them for their deeds. Against the
will of the whole American public, and of both
houses of Congress, an American ministry can,
if it be of one mind with the President, remain
in office and authority during the four years of
his rule. There is much that is most true and
admirable in the theory of the American
constitution, but it is one that can only be worked
successfully by honest men, and of late years the
constitutional monarchy of England has fulfilled
far more completely all the practical conditions
of a republic than the Federal Union of America.
And it would not, we think, be difficult to show
that the very unwieldiness of the Union since it
has advanced from its original dimensions to the
measure of a continent, has been the cause of
those defects in the machinery of government,
out of which comes the weakness that rushed
into civil war, for the prevention of a natural
and wholesome and inevitable self-adjustment
of the country. The faults of American politics
—at any rate in the North—arise from point
of character which are so far from being necessary
motives to error that they would doubtless
produce, within manageable bounds, one of the
best and strongest governments under the sun.
For want, however, of better statesmanship, the
country is now pouring out some of its best life-
blood in a war, of which the only good result
conceivable is sharper and exacter marking of
the natural line of demarcation between the
opposing interests, and a more unquestionable
establishment of the division of sovereignty than
might have been the work of friendly
understanding.

The Union first consisted of thirteen little
societies on the Atlantic side of North America.
It consists now of two great opposing powers,
from which, after their accepted disruption, a
great western region on the shores of the Pacific
is again likely to fall off into quiet independence.
The struggle between North and South has been
of long duration. South having the lead in the
federation, had fought some hard political
battles to retain it, and had already been beaten
on some vital points. But at the last presidential
election, which was a trial of strength
distinctly between South and North, the South
considering itself finally subjected to the North
within the federation, carried out its frequent
threat and desire of secession.

Virginia was " the old dominion" once yielding
so many statesmen to the Union that she
was called " the Mother of Presidents."
Washington, founder of the Union, lies in Virginian
soil; the federal capital also was Virginian, and
in the first days of the federal republic, the
only one of the thirteen states entirely without
slavery was Massachusetts. Meanwhile, there
was a constant stream of labour from the old
world to the new. White emigrants from
Northern Europe poured into the North.
Negroes were brought from Africa to the plantations
of the South. The extinction of the slave
trade and the clearing of slavery from the
Northern States, as both unnecessary to the soil
and climate, and repugnant to the temper of the
Northern people, made the differences greater
yet. There was no more flow of added population
from without into the plantation lands. At
the same time, over the North the tide of free
immigration flowed with constantly increasing
force. While the breach was becoming wider
between social feeling and political interests of
North and South, the old balance of population
was being greatly changed. The North, was
rapidly outnumbering the South. Representation
was by population. The number required
to return a representative, at first thirty-three
thousand, is now above one hundred and
twenty thousand. Virginia used to return
ten members, New York, six; at one time
Virginia returned twenty-three, now she returns
eleven members, New York thirty. South
Carolina, when the constitution was established,
stood for a thirtieth in the representation. Before
the secession she stood only for a sixtieth.
Long since, therefore, outnumbered in the House