the
right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the
public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses,
will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.
But the only security oL all, is in a free press. The force of public
opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The
agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the
waters pure.

We are all, for example, in agitation even in our peaceful country. For
in peace as well as in war, the mind must be kept in motion. Who is
to be the next President, is the topic here of every conversation. My
opinion on that subject is what I expressed to you in my last letter.
The question will be ultimately reduced to the northernmost and
southernmost candidates. The former will get every federal vote in the
Union, and many republicans; the latter, all those denominated of
the old school; for you are not to believe that these two parties are
amalgamated, that the lion and the lamb are lying down together.
The Hartford convention, the victory of Orleans, the peace of Ghent,
prostrated the name of federalism. Its votaries abandoned it through
shame and mortification; and now call themselves republicans. But the
name alone is changed, the principles are the same. For in truth,
the parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all
countries, whether called by these names, or by those of Aristocrats and
Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles
and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man, fears the people, and is
a tory by nature. The healthy, strong, and bold, cherishes them, and is
formed a whig by nature. On the eclipse of federalism with us, although
not its extinction, its leaders got up the Missouri question, under the
false front of lessening the measure of slavery, but with the real view
of producing a geographical division of parties, which might insure
them the next President. The people of the north went blindfold into the
snare, followed their leaders for a while with a zeal truly moral and
laudable, until they became sensible that they were injuring instead of
aiding the real interests of the slaves, that they had been used, merely
as tools for electioneering purposes; and that trick of hypocrisy then
fell as quickly as it had been got up. To that is now succeeding a
distinction, which, like that of republican and federal, or whig and