war would occur to him as the only historic
parallel for such a rhetorical phenomenon. The one was an ideal, as
the other is a commonplace example of the ludicrous contradictions
in which men may be involved, who find in personal motives the
justification of public conduct. That the chairman of the meeting
should have had in his pocket a letter from the candidate of the
Buffalo Convention, and that Mr. John Van Buren should have sat upon
the platform, while the orator charged the leaders of the Republican
Party with interested motives, were merely two of those incidental
circumstances by which Fact always vindicates her claim to be more
satiric than Fiction. But when Mr. Cushing speaks with exultation of
the past and with confidence of the future of the Original
Democratic Party, we can think of nothing like it but Charles II.
taking the Solemn League and Covenant, with an unctuous allusion to
the persecutions WE Covenanters have undergone, and the triumphs of
vital piety to which WE look forward.

Mr. Cushing claims that the Democratic Party has originated and
carried through every measure that has become a part of the settled
policy of the government. This is not very remarkable, if we
consider that the party has been in power during by far the
greater part of our national existence, and that under our system
the administration is practically a dictatorship for four years.
Mr. Everett long ago pointed out the advantage we should gain by
having a responsible ministry. As it is, the representative branch
of our government is practically a nullity. What with his immense
patronage, the progress of events, and the chance of luring the
opposing party into by-questions, the Presidential Micawber of the
moment is almost sure that something will turn up to extricate him
from the consequences of his own incompetency or dishonesty. The only
check upon this system is the chance that the temerity engendered by
irresponsible power may lead the executive to measures which, as in
the case of Kansas, shall open the eyes of thinking men to the real
designs and objects of those in office. An opposition is necessarily
transitory in its nature, if it be not founded on some principle
which, reaching below the shifting sands of politics, rests upon the
primary rock of morals and conscience. In such a principle only is
found the nucleus of a party which the adverse patronage of a
corrupt executive can but strengthen by attracting from it i