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bond. Of the whites at the South he would make a pretty clean sweep if their vote were free; and he will carry the great majority of them as it is. The blacks will probably adhere to the Carpet-baggers and Grant, notwithstanding the siren strains of Mr. Sumner, which indeed are counteracted by the utterances of other leading friends of the negro, who also differed from Mr. Sumner on the question of St. Domingo. In the press Greeley is decidedly stronger than his rival; and it is singular, and rather ominous for Grant, that his principal organ is one conducted by a British Bohemian, formerly the correspondent of the London Times and an assailant of American institutions. On the other hand it is not easy to believe that a coalition, so suddenly formed and so heterogeneous—a coalition of ultra-Republicans and ultra-Democrats, of ex-slave-owners and Negrophilists, of Free Traders and Protectionists, of Civil Service Reformers and Irish legionaries of the New York Ring-a coalition of men whose hands were but yesterday on each other's throats, the echoes of whose mutual vituperation have hardly died away, the ink of whose mutual libels is scarcely dry-can stand the strain of a three months' campaign in face of an enemy assiduously labouring to break it up, and under the fatal necessity of carrying on a constant discussion, by which all its divergences and contrarieties will be kept constantly in view. The candidate himself is not exactly the man to ride four horses at a time: his public life hitherto has been a series of escapades, and his managers can scarcely guard against a continuance of the series by any precautionary measure less stringent than that of keeping him locked up during the campaign. His organ, too, to maintain its circulation and his income, must go on writing in a Republican sense and estranging Democratic allies; nor will his formal retirement from connection with it pending the election do much to relieve him practically from this inconvenience. Grant's

party, though reduced in numbers, is homogenous and compact. He has throughout the Union a vast army of office-holders whose official lives are bound up with his, and who will fight for him with the unity of perfect discipline and with the energy of despair. His means of corruption and coercion, especially at the South, are immense, and probably have already triumphed in the North Carolina election. As the campaign goes on, and the Republican and Democratic banners are again seen facing each other in the field, many Republican deserters will probably straggle back to their old camp. Wall Street, the influence of which in politics has greatly increased of late, will be apt to shrink from an unsettlement, especially an unsettlement which would launch the ship on an unknown sea with Horace Greeley for commander. This feeling will probably be enhanced by the political maniacs of all kinds, who seem disposed to take the stump for Greeley and the "beneficent revolution." On the other hand some, as little addicted as Wall Street either to beneficence or revolutions, will seriously reflect on the danger of driving the South to extremity by the re-election of its hated oppressor. Mr. Gratz Brown was deemed a strong candidate for the Vice-Presidency; but it seems that he has been damaging the ticket by an offence against public manners. We advise our readers not to bet on the Presidential election; but if they do, we advise them to bet on Grant.

In any event let no false moral be drawn from this exhibition. It is not elective government that is in fault. If Mr. Adams, or any man equally worthy of national respect and confidence, could at this moment be presented to the suffrages of the American people, he would infallibly be elected. What prevents Mr. Adams, or any man like him, from being presented to the American people, is the machinery of party, which always has been, is, and always will

be, in the hands of men whose interests are widely different from those of the nation.

In the meantime we, in Canada, have had what nearly corresponds in our case to the Presidential election, being virtually the election of our Prime Minister, and entails no small measure of the same evils. Man paints himself as the creature of reason, and the lower animals as the creatures of habit. Perhaps, if the lower animals were the artists, the picture might not be so favourable to man. In the Middle Ages, when the King, not the Prime Minister or the Parliament, was the real ruler and lawgiver of the nation, a King of England summoned deputies from all the counties and boroughs of his dominion at once, by a general election, to grant him supplies and confer with him about the affairs of the nation. He might do so with impunity, since the government remained all the time undisturbed in his own person. But because he did so we, when all is changed, when the Prime Minister and the Parliament have become the real rulers, stick to the custom of general elections, instead of elections by instalments, and put up the government of the country periodically as the prize of a grand faction fight, inflicting on the community, by the process, a considerable portion of the moral evils of a civil war.

So again with regard to the issuing of the writs and the appointment of the election days. It was quite safe to leave all this in the hands of a King who had no object in playing tricks. But it is not so safe to leave it in the hands of a party leader, who has an object in playing tricks, and who does it with a vengeance. The appointment of election days ought not to be left to the arbitrary discretion of an electioneering government: it ought to be regulated by law. It would be well if, at the same time, the redivision of election districts could be controlled by some general enactment or committed to some neutral tribunal, instead of being “gerrymandered" as it is by the party leader and the party majority of the day.

No national character, however strong, can withstand the maddening and degrading influences of these great faction fights. In election amenities, we may flatter ourselves that we have faithfully reproduced the Eatanswills of our father-land. Language has been bandied on all sides which, if we had read it in Dickens, would have seemed too broad a caricature; and the most infamous charges against personal character have been mingled with the utmost fury of political invective. We might easily cull, in proof of our statement, a whole bouquet of these flowers of electioneering rhetoric, if their beauty and fragrance would not be too overpowering. And let us say that, in looking for them we should not go to the country press, in which they are commonly supposed most to abound. It is comforting to see that the country press of Canada maintains a tone on the whole at least as high as that of its

Not only so, but because in past ages, when accuracy in taking the votes was of little consequence, elections were held after a rough fashion by show of hands in the shire or borough court, we religiously retain, in addition to the modern polling, this old form of election, under the name of a nomination, to the great encouragement of row-city rivals. If it can also maintain its indedyism and the great detriment of public manners. Ingenious defences are always invented for every time-honoured absurdity; and in England it used to be said that the show of hands on the nomination day was the consolation of the unenfranchised masses; but we have no unenfranchised masses here.

pendence of party tyranny, and its loyalty to those great interests of the community, which are the last things considered by party leaders and their devoted organs, it may prove itself, in the times that are coming, the political sheet anchor of the country.

A few months ago a new daily journal of

first class character made its appearance, sectional animosities are inflamed, the love with professions of a less narrow partisan- of our common country is impaired, sneaks ship and a higher tone. In point of literary and ruffians are encouraged, men of honour ability and general management, this journal are deterred from going into public life. has proved a great accession to our press. But in point of partisanship it runs in the old groove. It was folly to expect any thing else. Largeness of mind, comprehensiveness of view, justice and courtesy to opponents, would be treason to the party. And yet, even for the purposes of party, calmness and sobriety of language are more effective than unmeasured denunciation.

Unfortunately we did not confine ourselves to a wordy war. Other things occurred which made people cry out "what will they say of us in England?" It would be better perhaps, if we thought less of British opinion, which is not very intelligent so far as our affairs are concerned, and more of our own self-respect. No nation can be disgraced by the acts of individuals, unless it chooses to accept the disgrace. Nor was it necessary, in seeking precedents for that which no precedent could defend, to cross the Atlantic and ransack the archives of British history. There are treasures of that kind in abundance nearer home. "Political discussions at Springfield," says an American biographer, "were apt to run into heated, and sometimes unseemly, personal controversies. When Douglas and Stuart were candidates for Congress in 1838, they fought like tigers in Hovendon's grocery, over a floor that was drenched with slops, and gave up the struggle only when both were exhausted. Then, as a further entertainment to the populace, Mr. Stuart ordered out a barrel of whiskey."

It is commonly said, that as soon as the contest is over, public feeling calms down and all the bad effects pass away. This, unfortunately, is very far from being the case. Mean and malignant passions can no more be excited with impunity in the case of a nation than in that of a man. National character is lowered, public life is degraded,

The parting address of Mr. Harrison, of course, afforded a butt for the arrows of small wit. Yet amidst the torrent of electioneering trash it was perhaps the one thing worthy of a moment's remembrance. We shall find that it is necessary to make public life tolerable to sense and self-respect, or to pay for their exclusion.

It would hardly be fair to set down the lamentable occurrences at Quebec among the normal effects of a general election. They were an effect of the antagonism of race. But general elections stir up and bring to a head all the vicious humours of the body politic, of whatever kind they may be.

The recklessness of the public good, common to all party leaders at the moment of a party conflict, was displayed in a feature of this contest, which was noticed by a writer in these columns before, and which assumed an aggravated form as the contest went on-the attempt to make political capital out of an industrial war between employers and workmen. The unpatriotic character of the proceeding was specially marked by the fact that the industrial war in this instance had been set on foot by an emissary from a foreign country, with whom the trusted guardians of Canadian interests found themselves virtually combining. An amendment of the Law respecting Strikes was very necessary; but the electioneering policy to which we advert was quite a different thing from an amendment of the law. Workingmen are terribly mistaken if they fancy that the great cause of justice to labour can be advanced by connecting it with the manœuvres of electioneering factions. The result is that they make one party their sincere and lasting enemies, and the other their hollow and transient friends. When they have served the turn of the wire-puller they are contemptuously thrown aside.

Independently of the allegations of bribery aristocracy and the working men. Even which parties always hurl at each other, there" Conservative” seems to be too reactionseems real reason to fear that, under cover of the unreformed Election Law, a good deal of money has been spent, and that constituencies have been corrupted which were pure before. In truth, the effects of bribery at elections upon the character of our people, even upon that of very respectable classes, becomes a cause for serious alarm.

ary for the new world, unless qualified by the deodorizing prefix "Liberal." A "Liberal Conservative" who could realize the idea conveyed by his name, might boast that he was dancing on the very tightest and slenderest rope ever occupied by any political acrobat in history. The title finally adop1ed, however, was "The Party of Union and And this barbarous and senseless party Progress." Union and Progress are comwar, with all its demoralizing consequences, prehensive terms. Who are the parties to is, we are told, the only mode in which pol- the union, and what are their ends? Is the itical questions can ever be solved, or polit-progress over a surveyed or over an unsurical progress carried on. It is destined to en- | veyed route? Sir James Brooke, in colondure for ever, in spite of the growing influence of reason in human affairs generally, and the increasing ascendency of the scientific spirit, not only among the highly educated, but among all who are in any way reached by the ideas of the times. You must be a "doctrinaire" if you think otherwise. In England the other day, in a wrangle about the site of a barrack, all other terms of abuse, even "parallelepiped," having been exhausted, one of the combatants called the other "a doctrinaire." Is it doctrinairism to say that the proof of the pudding lies in the eating? Can the party system be final perfection when, according to the very writers and speakers who most vehemently support it, it has saddled the country with a government of jobbery and corruption?

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izing Borneo, encountered a piratical fleet manned by native Dyaks, and commanded by Malays. The Dyaks were simple, religious people, who collected heads as offerings to their gods; the Malays were astute adventurers, who collected booty for themselves. Union and progress of a certain kind were the result.

On the side of the Opposition the theory was promulgated, on the highest authority, that the political world is eternally divided between two antagonistic principles, that of Reform and that of Anti-Reform, like the two mundane principles of light and darkness in the Manichean philosophy, and that our political existence depends on the everlasting struggle of these principles for place. An almost Athanasian subtlety of intellect is required to discern this essential duality beneath the apparent unity of the Macdonald-Brown administration of 1864, espe cially as the leading Reformer in that administration advocated the appointment of a nominative Senate. We are the victims of the idols of our cave, and regard as necessary and universal a state of things which here is but the unreflecting imitation of the habits of the mother country, and in the mother country herself is of compara tively recent date, and the mere offspring of historical accident. It is not more certain that to-morrow's night will give place to the

succeeding day, than it is that, with the growth of popular intelligence, the party principle will give place to the national principle in government.

But the party system exists, and while it exists it will be absolutely essential to the purity of government and the preservation of real liberty that we should have a strong Opposition. In the last Dominion Parliament the Opposition was so weak, especially after its great defeat on the Treaty, that it was incompetent to perform its constitutional functions, and the Ministers were left practically without a check. They might have legislated the hat off your head if they had chosen, and they did choose to do some very objectionable, or at least some very questionable, things. That they intend to make any bad use of the powers which they voted themselves in regard to the Pacific Railway Contract, it would be unjust to insinuate, or even to suspect, before anything wrong has been done; but it may safely be said that a Government which has obtained possession of such powers needs to be watched and controlled in its proceedings, if ever a government did. Seldom, perhaps, has a more serious peril threatened the independence of any legislature, or the polical character of any nation.

The creation of votes for the unpeopled lands of Manitoba and Columbia, the refusal of the constitutional guarantees against the abuse of the secret service money and retention of the unreformed election law, were also undeniably questions of the most serious character, both in themselves and as indications of the tendency of the Government.

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Railway Contract, more clearly on its banners, talking less about general party creeds and party histories, and if it had not given the contest so much the air of a personal and vindictive conflict with the Prime Minister an error of which he knows well how to take advantage in his appeal to the sympathies of the people. But it has gained, and the Government will no longer be uncontrolled in the exercise of power.

Those who look solely to the broad interests of the country will also rejoice at the election of some half dozen members belong. ing more or less to the class "Independent." Of course these members will not be able to act as if they were in a political vacuum ; they will be obliged to fall more or less into party associations. But if they can preserve their independence of mind, and keep coun try above party in their allegiance, they may, in certain cases, render services which would entitle them to the gratitude of the country. Nor would they or any patriotic members of the legislature lack popular support in contending against the vices of government. The great advantage which we have over the people of the United States lies not so much in the superior purity of our Government as in the superior power of resistance to corrupt influences among the people. A Hampden is now scarcely possible in the United States, but a Hampden is still possible here. What we may think with regard to the special issues of the late election, we must own that the independent yeomanry of Canada have shown themselves worthy representatives of those old English yeomen who in former days were the sinews of British freedom; and we may feel assured that the cause of constitutional liberty here has a body of defenders who will not quail before any government, however great may be the means influence in its hands.

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