the Republicans have no argument but the
"cry of _Slavepower!_"--which is as eloquent a one as the old
Roman's _Delenda est Carthago_, to those who know how many years of
bitter experience, how many memories of danger and forebodings of
aggression, are compressed in it. But he is mistaken; Democratic
administrations have been busy in supplying arguments, and we
complain rather of their abundance than their paucity. The repeal of
the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas policy, which even office-holders
who had gulped their own professions found too nauseous to swallow,
and the Dred Scott decision,--if these be not arguments, then
history is no teacher, and events have no logic.

Mr. Cushing adroitly evades the real matter in issue, and assumes
that it is a mere question of the relative amount of federal office
secured by the North and the South respectively. This may be a very
natural view of the case in a man whose map of nationality would
seem to be bounded North by a seat in Congress, East by a Chinese
Embassy, West by an Attorney-Generalship, and South by the vague
line of future contingency; but it hardly solves the difficulty.
With characteristic pluck he takes the wolf by the ears. The charge
being, that the power of the Slave States has been gaining a steady
preponderance over that of the Free States by means of the federal
administration, he answers it by saying that he has made it a
subject of "philosophic study," and has found that Massachusetts has
had a "pretty fair run of the power of the Union,"--whatever that
may be. The phrase is unfortunate, for it reminds one too much of
the handsome competence with which a father once claimed to have
endowed his son in giving him the run of the streets since he was
able to go alone. But let us test Mr. Cushing's logic by an
equivalent proposition. He is executor, we will suppose, of an
estate to be divided among sixteen heirs; he pays A his portion, and
claims a discharge in full. What would not Mr. Buchanan give for a
receipt by which office-seekers could be so cheaply satisfied!

"Philosophic study," to be sure! It may be easy for gentlemen, the
chief part of whose productive industry has been the holding of
office or the preparing of their convictions for the receipt of more,
to be philosophic; but it is not so easy for Massachusetts to be
satisfied, when she sees only those of her children so rewarded who
misrepresent her long-cherished principles, who oppose the s