g characteristic for the last five
years has been a uniform alacrity in going under; the offices in the
gift of the President might very well be reckoned on to supply the beef
which should lead by their noses the weary expectants whose hunger
might be too strong for their nicety of stomach; and the pinch of
salt,--why could not that be found in the handful of Republicans who
might be drawn over by love of notoriety, private disgusts, or that
mixture of motives which has none of the substance of opinion, much
less of the tenacity of principle, but which is largely operative in
the action of illogical minds? But the people? Would they be likely to
have their appetite aroused by the fumes of this thin decoction? Where
a Chinaman is cook, one is apt to be a little suspicious; and if the
Address in which the Convention advertised their ingenious mess had not
a little in its verbiage to remind one of the flowery kingdom, there
was something in that part of the assemblage which could claim any
bygone merit of Republicanism calculated to stimulate rather than to
allay any dreadful surmise of the sagacious rodent which our antipodes
are said to find savory. And as for the people, it is a curious fact,
that the party which has always been loudest to profess its faith in
their capacity of self-government has been the last to conceive it
possible that they should apprehend a principle, arrive at a logical
conclusion, or be influenced by any other than a mean motive. The
_cordons bleus_ of the political cooks at Philadelphia were men
admirably adapted for the petty intrigues of a local caucus, but by
defect of nature profoundly unconscious of that simple process of
generalization from a few plain premises by which the popular mind is
guided in times like these, and upon questions which appeal to the
moral instincts of men.

The Convention was well managed, we freely admit,--and why not, when
all those who were allowed to have any leading part in it belonged
exclusively to that class of men who are known as party managers, and
who, like the director of a theatre or a circus, look upon the mass of
mankind as creatures to be influenced by a taking title, by amplitude
of posters, and by a thrilling sensation or two, no matter how coarse?
As for the title, nothing could be better than that of the "Devoted
Unionists,"--and were not the actors, no less than the scenery and
decorations, for the most part entirely new,--at least in that
par