-still be in danger of shattering his vessel against that of some friend whom he would not willingly jostle. It is impossible to be for ever in port; and, in this uncertain state of the political elements, we dare not venture out with our little gun-boat, lest we come in contact with some of the seventyfours, now fitting for an expedition.

To be less figurative: We understand that the masterspirits were at work last week, and that an arrangement was to be made, by which all political differences were to be reconciled, — all were to be brought into one great family,— the names Republican and Federalist to be expunged from the vocabulary, all our garments to be purified of the odors of the embargo, the terrapin system, and the Hartford Convention. It is our fault, perhaps, that we are too impatient, and unwilling that delay should keep pace between a good purpose and its effect.

The old republican party is divided, and all are acquainted with the inspired maxim, A kingdom divided against itself cometh to nought. The old federal party is declared to be defunct, and its odor remaineth only as an offence to a few individuals, who have survived its dissolution. If it be indeed so, we derive some consolation from the hope that, phoenixlike, a new party may arise from its ashes, possessing the wisdom, the magnanimity, the prudence, the disinterestedness, the patriotism, which rendered 'the original an object of admiration and respect while in its vigor of manhood; but without any of that weakness, meanness, or infidelity to friends and benefactors, that disgraced its decline. The dotage of the Sage and the imbecility of the Giant may excite compassion; the affected humility of an aristocrat in fetters, like the morality of a superannuated libertine, produces only disgust.

It was in the summer of 1827, that the railroad mania began to manifest itself in Massachusetts. Some symptoms had, indeed, been discovered a year or two sooner, but the fever had not prevailed to any great

extent. The following article, published in June, 1827, expressed not merely the notions I then entertained, but the general opinion of the people. The idea of a railroad from Boston to Albany, or even to Springfield, was met with ridicule in the Legislature, as a project too absurd to be discussed with gravity:

Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog's tail, that quid nuncs (we suppose such animals existed in ancient as well as in modern times) might not become extinct for want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our naturat and experimental philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany; - a project, which every one knows, — who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic, to be impracticable but at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the Moon. Indeed, a road of some kind from here to the heart of that beautiful satellite of our dusky planet would be of some practical utility, especially, if a few of our notional, public-spirited men, our railway fanatics, could be persuaded to pay a visit to their proper country. There would be no fear of their ever returning to such a dull spot as this peninsula of Boston, where you cannot walk five rods without annoyance from some new edifice that is in progress to completion, - finding yourself intrenched in a fortress of cotton bales, more impenetrable than that which our next President, that is (not) to be, erected for the defence of New-Orleans, or being obliged to wait half an hour before you can cross a street, for a caravan of loaded trucks to pass by.

This railroad from Boston to Albany is, after all, a verypleasant thing, to talk about. It has converted two or three very indifferent men into orators and toast-makers of great parts and patriotism. It has so frightened the New-Yorkers that they have already suffered the grass to grow from the bed of their grand canawl, and their North river steam-boats will

soon be sacrificed under the hammer of the auctioneer. One of the great movers in our railway concern has hinted to us, (under a pledge of profound secrecy, however,) that the main object of the invisible managers is to alarm our neighbors of New-York with a threatened loss of trade to the West, in order (cunning dogs!) that they, i. e. the railway managers, may be able to buy the said North river steam-boats at a bargain. This project has also tested the liberality of our state legislature, who, with unexampled public spirit, not to call it by the more alarming name of prodigality, after the ever-to-be-remembered trip to the Quiney railroad the neverto-be-forgotten interclusion of the Ousatonic between the piers of Neponset bridge,*appropriated, from the public treasury, ten thousand dollars for the purpose of promoting internal improvements.

We have almost forgotten why we began this article; but, if we recollect right, it was to introduce the following toast, given lately at a public entertainment, by an advocate for the railroad from Boston to Albany: :

"Internal Improvements. May the time speedily arrive when the canal boats shall come from Rochester to Boston on a railroad over Hoosac Mountain." [Nine cheers. Song, Back-side Albany.]

Within a year after writing this piece of sarcasm, the editor of the Courier was one of some ten or twelve persons who petitioned the Legislature in favor of a railroad from Boston to Ogdensburg, and who, themselves, paid the expense of an engineer to go over the proposed route, and report upon the practicability of making it. On no other subject,. probably, has private or public opinion undergone so thorough a

* A number of the members of the Legislature of 1826, made a "reconnoisance" to the Quincy railroad in a small steam-boat, called the Ousatonic. On their return, the boat stuck between the piers of Neponset bridge ; — an event which caused some merriment at the expense of a member of the Boston delegation, who was the chief manager on the occasion.

change in twenty years, as in regard to the utility of railroads.

The applicants for a protective tariff proposed to make a strong effort in favor of the measure at the session of Congress which was to begin in December, 1827. By their persuasion I was induced to spend the winter in Washington, in order to keep our friends at home informed of whatever might be done or contemplated for the accomplishment of their purpose.* The letters I wrote during the winter occupy a large portion of the paper. The first of the two articles that follow was intended chiefly as an exposition and justification of the views I entertained in reference to general politics; the second has reference more particularly to the policy of the advocates for the tariff:

"Our first homage and duty are due to truth and justice; and it is our firm belief, that if they had been carefully observed by the editors friendly to the administration, the cause of Mr. Adams would be now stronger than it is, being intrinsically the best."-National Gazette, Dec. 11.

To this declaration we heartily subscribe. It corresponds so faithfully to the course we have endeavored to pursue, as editors, and to the path we have marked out for futurity, that we have selected it as a text for some thoughts that may be woven into a very grave dilucidatory discourse.

"Our first homage and duty are due to truth and justice." Acting under a deep sense of the responsibility imposed on us by an assent to this doctrine, we have, for some years, uniformly excluded from the columns of this paper the base and malignant attacks on the characters of the most promi

* While I was in Washington, my eldest son, Joseph H. Buckingham, had the sole superintendence of the editorial department of the Courier.

nent men in our country, which the columns of thorough-going partizan prints have constantly presented to the public gaze. Some of these productions have never been noticed, even by remote or indirect allusion. To particularize now would be an abandonment of the ground on which we stand. When the disgusting anecdotes, purporting to be scraps of private history, conveyed to the public eye through channels as filthy as the fount whence they originally issued, shall have been substantiated to the satisfaction of disinterested and unprejudiced minds, it will be soon enough for us to place them on record. Truth and justice may then require the enrolment as an act of homage, but it will not be performed without a painful struggle. On the other hand, the same sense of responsibility has kept us from mingling with the innumerable herd of fawners and flatterers, who are eternally exaggerating the merits of their respective leaders, — who seem to think that all human, if not all god-like excellences, are combined in the character and attributes of the man whom it is their pleasure or their interest to honor. There is as little reason in the extravagant panegyrics offered to the administration in some of their favorite and favored journals, as there is in the wild and profligate expenditure of praise to him, who is said by his worshipers to have "filled the measure of his country's glory." This flattering bombast degrades rather than exalts its subject. We know of no man living who can justly claim to stand on a pinnacle so high above all others, in reference to either moral or intellectual qualities, in reference either to past public services or the promise of future achievements, as that on which a few of our political champions and heroes are placed by their respective partizans. In this republican country, republican at least in the form of its government and in the nature and arrangement of most of its civil, political, literary, and religious institutions, where the road to political distinction is open to every one who has intelligence enough to perceive it, ambition enough to induce him to enter, and courage enough to enable him to walk therein, — it is not possible that any two, or two hundred men, should possess exclusively the qualities that constitute a patriot, a hero,