such a popular movement as it had always, from the very outset, and in the midst of the darkest hour of its trial, so boldly appealed to, so confidently predicted, and so nobly trusted to. In all quar. ters, as manifested by the despondent tone of their press, and in private intercourse by the confession in countless instances wrung from the chagrin of discomfiture and disappointment, the Whigs as a party seemed to be on the point of giving up the contest-of abandoning the people to the merited fate of their own infatuationof retiring in disgust from this ineffectual contest with the "fierce democracie," upon whose obtuse intellect it proved thus impossible to make a permanent impression, in opposition to an Administration which, sprung from them, had the sagacity, if we may not be permitted to call it the honesty, to place its strength and its reliance in its adherence to the first great principles of Democratic truth, and in its bold confidence in the ultimate sagacity of the honest popular judgment. And we sincerely believe that they would have done so-even, probably, to the extreme of not attempting a serious organization for the Presidential contest-but for the unexpected intervention of their victory in New York, to rescue them from the immediate agonies of political dissolution, and to postpone yet a little longer the evil day which, nevertheless, was neither to be averted nor mitigated. That defeat (though by a largely diminished majority from that of the preceding year) was as unexpected to ourselves, as had been many of the former triumphs which had preceded it. It was easy, however, to explain it, on principles entirely peculiar to the particular case, and foreign from those on the operation of which we relied for eventual success in the general political contest. They have been stated in a former Article, and are familiar to our readers. The result of the New York election did not in the slightest degree affect the prospects of the Administration, nor touch the elevated security of its position. In comparison with the preceding election it was itself a victory; and it was accompanied with such evidences of the progressing, though yet incomplete, re-organization of the long disordered and confused Democratic party in that State-and with such indications of real weakness and of inevitable approaching downfall, on the part of its opponents-that there was no affectation in the expressions of satisfaction which, on a calm review of the whole ground, were used in relation to it by some of the most enlightened friends of the very party which sustained the reverse.

But to the Whigs this success-together with the god-send of the blessed discovery of the enormous defalcation of their former especial friend, the late Collector of the port of New York, came like the reprieve to the criminal on the eve of his last allotted day. It revived a little their exhausted hopes, re-inspirited their drooping courage, and rallied, for yet another effort, their wavering and

yielding array of party organization. Well may they render praise and thanksgiving to the individual to whose unwearied exertions, next to the long accumulated errors and faults of our own party in that State, they were mainly indebted for it! And if the triumphal processions, and broadly trumpeted ceremonials of reception and greeting, with which his friends may attempt to stimulate, to some faint show of warmth, a popular enthusiasm which never has and never can, under any circumstances, be aroused in behalf of a political apostate-if, we say, such attempts, by a handful of personal friends and party associates, prove cold and meagre and spiritless failures-and if one-half of the local Whig press, with their gigantic sheets, regret to find themselves prevented by "the crowded state of their columns" from even spreading out in full the brief record of the high proceeding

Not what it was, but what it should have been

we have no other remark to make upon it, while we point ambitious politicians to the sad warning of the example, than that the Whigs of New York, in such a treatment of the able and distinguished ex-Senator who has last gone to swell the long array of the leaders they have derived from the secessions from the Democratic ranks, have only again proved their political gratitude to be about on a par with their political honesty of principle.

Such, then to return from the episode which has tempted us aside to moralize a moment upon an instructive political lessonsuch, then, was the state of parties on the re-assemblage of Congress, for its third and last session, within the period over which we are casting this rapid bird's-eye glance. In an Article in our December Number on "The Coming Session," we expressed the curiosity which our readers must have shared with us, as to what the Whigs could have to say, what to do, for themselves at that session, on the main topic of party interest, the fiscal system to be adopted for the Federal Government. Time has now furnished the answers to our queries which no foresight could have anticipated; we hasten, therefore, to give our readers such account of them as we may.

It certainly appeared a most embarrassing position that that party occupied in Congress, it being impossible to decide which course was the most awkward and impracticable, to advance, to retreat, or to remain stationary. All the old topics rendered unavailable-the distress at an end-the panic succeeded by a confidence already threatening to run into unhealthy excess-their cardinal principle, a National Bank, beginning, from a bitter necessity and with the worst grace imaginable, to be disavowed by its own friends--the melancholy contrast in the state of public opinion, as indicated by the elections, between the present year and the last-what materials now remained to them for those copious floods of partisan invective with which it has been of late years their annual wont, instead

of attending to the proper duties of legislation, to consume the sessions of Congress? And what could they do? Being in majority in the House of Representatives, the responsibility was incumbent on them, of either adopting some legalized fiscal system, or of leaving the public revenue, unregulated by law, unprotected by the checks and safeguards of which recent events had so strikingly illustrated the necessity, at the sole discretion of the Executive. Of all imaginable alternatives, the last appeared the least possible. It would be too palpable a confession of political profligacy, too open an admission of the falsehood of all the charges of corruption and incompetence, so long and vehemently urged against the Administration! For the sole motives that could possibly dictate such a course must be, either a secret desire that the public Treasury should be in fact badly and dishonestly managed, to afford materials for continued future partisan attack, as they them. selves denounced and predicted,—or a secret confidence in the wisdom, integrity, and patriotism of the Executive, in relation to "the purse," similar to that manifested in another great measure of the session, in relation to "the sword." They are welcome to their choice of the two horns of the dilemma. We were justified, therefore, in assuming it to be impossible that the Whigs could undertake the responsibility of adjourning without having adopted some system or other; which, in the manifest impossibility of reviving the old Deposite Bank System, or of even attempting the proposition of a National Bank, could be no other than at least some modification of "the odious Sub-Treasury Scheme."

We shall never again repeat the folly of believing any absurdity, any inconsistency, any self-contradiction, impossible to a party thus constituted, and actuated by such a spirit as the present Opposition in Congress has so long and so often exhibited. We acknowledge the mistake which none but themselves could have so effectually corrected; and stand rebuked by their own conduct, for having given them a certain degree of credit which we shall certainly never again be guilty of thus imputing to them. They have again, contrary to our supposition, planted themselves on the old ground of prevention. It was early apparent that such was still their determination; and accordingly the friends of the Administration, in the House of Representatives, early gave up in despair all hope of carrying any measure for the establishment of the Independence of the Treasury through the present Congress; while the Senate justly felt it to be incompatible with its proper dignity to send a third bill of a similar character to that body, to share the fate of its two predecessors. There appears to have been a general disposition, on the part of the friends of the measure, to leave the question now with the country and the next Congress,-secure of the continued and confirmed ascendancy of the present Administration and its

policy, and satisfied that every day was loosening more and more the hold that the banks have held upon the public favor, as agents for the fiscal administration of the government of the country.

The Senate contented itself with passing a bill for the more effectual prevention and punishment of public defaulters-a bill very elaborate, complete and unexceptionable in its provisions for that object. This bill was steadily opposed by the Opposition in the Senate, as a distinct party question; and in the House, where, on that ground, its fate could not have been long doubtful had it been acted upon at all, the dominant party allowed the session to expire without an attempt to adopt that or any measure of a similar character and object.

How strongly this simple review of facts, on which no commentary could shed a clearer light, illustrates the flagrant dishonesty of all the clamors so long and loudly thundered against the party in power, especially in relation to its administration of the public finances. Is it possible that any considerable portion of that public opinion that has heretofore supported such leaders, can continue insensible to such open demonstration of party profligacy!

The topic of the public defalcations was the only gun that the Opposition have plied against the Administration at the last session-all the others of their former batteries having, as we have seen, either been silenced, or having exploded, one after another, of themselves, doing more injury among their own ranks than they ever have done among those against whom their fires had been directed. This was the one idea of the session. It is true, that at the commencement of the session a strong but intemperate attempt was made to excite a little Abolition agitation, but it was a most lamenttable failure. By one of the most skilful, prompt and energetic parliamentary movements that we have ever witnessed, the Democratic party in the House blighted in the bud every hope that might have been cherished of weakening the daily growing strength of the Administration at the South by the agitation of this question. By the famous" Atherton Resolutions," not only was this long-vexed question, as a political one, placed at last, fully and distinctly, on its true ground of the State-Rights principle, so as to be able to combine the free support of all the Democracy of the North, of which many had before had but an imperfect understanding of it, but moreover a sudden and total extinguisher was put upon the very possibility of making it a means of party agitation within the Halls of Congress. This movement set the matter at rest. The Whigs themselves evinced their consciousness of it by the desperate efforts which they made to evade or counteract it, when it was too late; and by the petulant explosions of impotent chagrin by which some of their leaders, the loudest in declamation about Southern rights on this subject, showed that it was only for the low and unholy

purposes of political capital, that they had so long been deafening the wearied ear of the country with their clamor against the agitation of the slavery question on the floors of Congress. There was but one single eminent individual who did not perceive how completely the subject was now placed at rest-that the tide had turned-that the iron which but a short time ago had been so hissing hot had now become cold;-that eminent individual was Mr. Clay, who, towards the close of the session, in his well known anti-Abolition speech, was seen to stab, and gash, and mutilate most ruthlessly the dead body of Political Abolitionism-reminding us of the country player who, after the play was over, the catastrophe consummated, the curtain descending, and the audience gone or going, recollected a most important speech, which he ought to have delivered at the beginning of the first act, and which therefore, as it contained a capital point of tragic effect, he begged the audience now to listen to, by way of epilogue. In fact this has always been Mr. Clay's unfortunate fate in all his Presidential demonstrations; and, with Mr. Niles' permission, we would suggest as the most appropriate epitaph for his tomb on the consummation of that political death now less than two years distant-as embodying the whole moral of the life of an ambitious politician with whom expediency was the main governing principle—“ ALWAYS A LITTLE TOO LATE !"

The defalcations were, then, the one idea of the Opposition at the late session. They plied it hard, but, after all, with lamentably little effect! The proceedings in relation to that investigation have done vastly more injury to the cause of those who conducted them, than to those against whom they were directed. The denunciations in advance-the most unjust and unfair commentaries that were made upon the correspondence of the Treasury Department with the receivers, &c., which exhibited only one-half of the picturc, not containing the letters of explanation from the officers referred to, as well as the vigilant communications of the Department to them, in relation to irregularities before the detection of their actual defalcations, defalcations into which they were tempted by the demoralizing seductions of the credit system, and which were rendered easy by the imperfections of the existing restraints of law, and by the facilities of the bank deposite system-the pledges to impeach the Head of the Treasury Department, if a fair committee of investigation should be allowed by the House-the most unblushing packing of that Committee by the secret ballot, so as not even to allow the Democratic party the selection of its own members, on the minority of three to six, by a party with whom it had long been a favorite topic to denounce the appointment of party committees by a Democratic Speaker-the inquisitorial secrecy of that Committee