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 elitorial 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,

or a statesman. We have no belief in the existence of demigods in our day and generation. While the "pregnant hinges of our knee" are ever ready to bend at the shrine of genius, intellect and patriotism, our tongue would cleave to the roof of our mouth, should we essay to unite in the current hyperbolical hallelujahs that are chaunted before a political image, or in the sickening sibillations which greet the approach of his rival.

Let the besotted town

Bestow, as Fashion prompts, the laurel crown ;
But let not him, who makes a fair pretence

To that best boon of Heaven, to Common Sense,
Resign his judgement to the rout, and pay
Knee-worship to the idol of the day.

That the "cause of Mr. Adams" is intrinsically better than that of his great political competitor, we never for a moment doubted, nor do we, at the time of writing these remarks, see any just cause for a change in our opinion. As to all the peculiar qualifications, "too numerous to be particularized” in this article, which fit a man to preside over and control the operations of our government, Mr. Adams stands at an immeasurable distance before the gentleman who has been selected to succeed him by the party in opposition. It is presumed that the warmest and most devoted friends of Gen. Jackson will not deny that, in respect to education, experience in political affairs, power of reasoning, and a variety of other accomplishments, necessary, or at least desirable, in the character of a great statesman, he is much inferior to Mr. Adams. The great question now at issue between the parties, if we understand any thing of its nature, is not a question respecting individual qualifications in the President, but simply a question of prerogative, of rank or precedence, between the north and the south; or, perhaps, to speak with more literal accuracy, between the slave-holding and the non-slaveholding states. It is doubtless the wish of the leading politicians of the south to supply the nation with rulers from their own section of the Union. The opposition to the President, we fear, originated in a local feeling, - a pride which suffered

defeat and mortification by the election of a northern man; for we have too high an opinion of the mental and acquired powers of the prominent individuals of the opposition to believe that they suppose the cause of Gen. Jackson "intrinsically the best." They probably admit, and thus far we certainly should agree with them, that it is of no great importance who lives in the marble mansion at Washington, provided he is a man "capable and honest," - national and liberal in his views, — willing and resolved to maintain the interests of "his country, his whole country, and nothing but his country." Neither can they imagine that Gen. Jackson is superior in any respect to many other gentlemen who might be named, south of the Potomac. But, from a single fortunate incident in his life, he has acquired a popularity that has hitherto fallen to the lot of very few individuals. He is probably the only individual in the United States, around whom the hopes and expectations of an opposition to the present administration could be concentrated with a possible chance of success.

The opposition to Mr. Adams, we have intimated, is not so much of a personal character as it is sectional. An erroneous impression prevails in the southern states, that New-England is growing rich and powerful, at the expense of her southern neighbors, that Yankees are monopolizing the trade and wealth of the nation, and from this mistaken view of our feelings and policy has grown a most inveterate and bitter prejudice against the people of the north, as unworthy as it is unfounded, — a prejudice which can be easily eradicated by more frequent and general intercourse. There is nothing that we can perceive in the policy or practice of New-England that might not be adopted in the southern states with the fairest prospects of a successful issue. New-England annually sends forth her industrious and enterprising traders to Charleston, Savannah, New-Orleans, and the smaller southern seaports, to buy and to sell, and to remit the proceeds of mercantile traffic to their partners or their principals at home; and what prevents South-Carolina from pursuing a similar course, and sending an equal number of her young men to New-York,

Providence, Boston, Portland and Salem? The people of the northern states have taken advantage of their physical resources; they have employed the water-power of the country to move the machinery of manufactures, and they are exploring the interior of their mountains for mineral treasures to supply the wants which have hitherto been served by importations. Those of the south may not have the water-power which propels our manufacturing machinery, but the power of steam is confined to no section, and they have the advantage of being able to produce the raw material on their lands, and they have the still greater advantage of slave-labor, which is abundantly adequate to the performance of much of the mechanical operations in manufactories. The reproachful sneers that have found their way into the newspapers, in which New-England merchants and manufacturers are nicknamed Peers of the Power Loom and Lords of the Spinning Jenny, are entirely unworthy of that dignity of character and elevation of mind which have been striking characteristics of the people of South-Carolina. There are no means or resources of wealth and power enjoyed by the people of New-England that are not equally under the control of those at the south. If, possessing these means and resources, they do not choose to avail themselves of them, surely it should be no reproach to the inhabitants of another section of the Union that they have adopted a different course. We have thought much and deeply on this subject, and have been active in obtaining from the best sources of information such facts as have led us to believe that the policy now pursued in the northern states, the promotion of internal improvements, the exploring and development of our natural resources, and the protection of domestic manufactures, is the only true policy of this nation, - the only policy which can keep alive its commerce with other nations, the only policy that can diffuse wealth, activity, prosperity, and consequent enjoyment and happiness throughout every portion of the country, the only policy that can give us, in peace and in war, that sort of independence which seems to be universally desirable. It gives us pleasure to perceive that there are indications of the growing popu