rule there are important exceptions. A presidential[3] or a
congressional campaign sometimes involves the fate of most important
measures of policy, and creates a corresponding excitement. At such
periods, the country is flooded with "extra" newspapers and political
lecturers, the walls groan with placards, bar-room politicians talk
themselves hoarse, and steamboat passengers amuse themselves with
holding meetings and sham-balloting for the respective candidates. Still
the enthusiasm of the parties generally spends itself in words; they
seldom come into actual personal collision. Even in the West, there are
not _more_ rows on election days than at other times. But here again we
have a notorious exception in the case of New-York. Many thousands of
the "finest pisantry" have located themselves in that city, and they
have not lost an iota of their belligerent propensities, affording a
beautiful illustration of _coelum non animum_, &c. Entirely under the
influence of their priests, they are almost invariably to be found on
the agrarian side, and are ready at any time to attack a whig
(conservative) meeting, storm the polls, or engage in any other act of
violence to which their wily leaders may prompt them.

In the spring of 1840, the Whigs of the State of New York (the _city_
still inclined the other way) had been in power nearly two years, with a
decided majority in both houses of the legislature, and a governor who
"went the entire animal" with them. Washington Irving says that the best
men of a party propose to themselves three ends: first, to get their
opponents out; secondly, to get themselves in; thirdly, to do some good
to the country; but the majority are satisfied with attaining the first
two objects. Now the Whigs had accomplished these as thoroughly as they
could have desired, and had made such use of their victory as to put it
out of the power of any one to charge them with being worse than
infidels. They, therefore, like good patriots, set about the third
proposed point, and their first step was to take some measures for
improving the election laws, so far as concerned the city of New-York.
That city had more than 300,000 inhabitants,[4] at least 26,000 voters,
and no registry law whatever. The consequence may be easily imagined. If
a man chose to take the responsibility of perjuring himself, he could
always pass a false vote, and was frequently able to do it without that
unpleasant necessity. To prove _residenc