lection--in
our September number--we made a promise which seemed about the safest
that could be made, but which proved to be a rash one--so rash that at
this moment we are entirely unable to redeem it--as unable as if we had
undertaken to say which exhibitor at the Philadelphia Exhibition would
not get a medal. We said that we would give our readers accurate
information, in our December number, as to which party was likely to
carry the day. What may happen before these words are printed and laid
before our readers we cannot tell; and the experience of the past few
weeks has taught us caution as to prediction and promise, even upon
apparent certainty; but although the election is more than a month past,
_we_ do not know who is to be President, and no one is wiser on this
subject than we are. The matter is not one to be treated lightly. It is
of the gravest possible importance. No consequence of our civil war is
more serious or more deplorable than that condition of the former slave
States, which has caused this prolonged uncertainty with regard to the
result of the election, and that political state of the whole country
which has made this uncertainty the occasion of such intense and
embittered feeling, and such desperate measures by the managers of both
the great political parties. In fact, the war of secession is not at an
end. Twelve years have passed since the military forces of the seceders
surrendered to those of the Government, but the contest, or one arising
from it, prolongs itself into the present, when those are men who, when
the war broke out, were too young to understand its causes. And at the
same time we are suffering, in our prostrate trade and almost
extinguished commerce, another grievous consequence of the same dire
internecine struggle. Truly ourselves and our institutions are sorely
tried. A like combination of disastrous circumstances would bring about
a revolution in any other country. If we go through this trial safely,
we may not only feel thankful, but take some reasonable pride in the
national character and in the political institutions that will bear such
a long and severe strain without breaking. And yet we all have faith
that we shall endure it and come out in the end more stable and more
prosperous than ever.

--The cause of this trouble is a change in the political substance and
the political habits of the country, of which the average citizen seems
to have little knowledge and of which