oo_ Constitutional.

Meanwhile, the only point in which voters are interested is, What do
they mean by the Constitution? Mr. Breckinridge means the superiority
of a certain exceptional species of property over all others; nay, over
man himself. Mr. Douglas, with a different formula for expressing it,
means practically the same thing. Both of them mean that Labor has no
rights which Capital is bound to respect,--that there is no higher law
than human interest and cupidity. Both of them represent not merely the
narrow principles of a section, but the still narrower and more selfish
ones of a caste. Both of them, to be sure, have convenient phrases to
be juggled with before election, and which mean one thing or another,
or neither one thing nor another, as a particular exigency may seem to
require; but since both claim the regular Democratic nomination, we
have little difficulty in divining what their course would be after the
fourth of March, if they should chance to be elected. We know too well
what regular Democracy is, to like either of the two faces which each
shows by turns under the same hood. Everybody remembers Baron Grimm's
story of the Parisian showman, who in 1789 exhibited the _royal_ Bengal
tiger under the new character of _national_, as more in harmony with
the changed order of things. Could the animal have lived till 1848,
he would probably have found himself offered to the discriminating
public as the _democratic_ and _social_ ornament of the jungle. The
Pro-slavery party of this country seeks the popular favor under even
more frequent and incongruous _aliases_: it is now _national_, now
_conservative_, now _constitutional_; here it represents
Squatter-Sovereignty, and there the power of Congress over the
Territories; but, under whatever name, its nature remains unchanged,
and its instincts are none the less predatory and destructive.

Mr. Lincoln's position is set forth with sufficient precision in the
platform adopted by the Chicago Convention; but what are we to make of
Messrs. Bell and Everett? Heirs of the stock in trade of two defunct
parties, the Whig and Know-Nothing, do they hope to resuscitate them?
or are they only like the inconsolable widows of Pere la Chaise, who,
with an eye to former customers, make use of the late Andsoforth's
gravestone to advertise that they still carry on business at the old
stand? Mr. Everett, in his letter accepting the nomination, gave us
only a string of reasons wh