to the conclusion that the Executive could not interfere in any manner to protect them, but must leave them to return to the towns in the Indian country, where they had a right to remain.

This seems to have been a crude view. of the more recent doctrine of "non-intervention," and the results were quite in harmony with the workings of the same principle in Kansas. The Maroons returned to their villages, where they had a right to remain; but not long after a slave dealer appeared in the Creek country, and offered to pay the Creeks $100 for every negro that they would seize and deliver to him properly secured.

This offer was too much for Creek virtue. They secretly assembled two hundred warriors, who made a descent on the Maroon settlements at a time when they suspected no danger. They were taken unawares, and before they could arm themselves seventy of their number, mostly women and children, were seized and secured. The Seminole agent interposed, and had the matter brought before the nearest court in Arkansas, a slave state, and the judge decided that the Indians had a rightful claim to the Maroons under their agreement with General Jessup, and they were thereupon released to the trader, and the whole seventy hurried off to New Orleans and sold into slavery.

It was now clear that there was no protection for the Maroons within the boundaries of the United States, so they held a council to consider what was best to be done. Some of them were connected by marriage with leading Seminole families, and felt so secure in the protection which this advantage gave them, as to feel it safe to remain; but about three hundred of them resolved to sunder their connection with their old friends, the Seminoles, and take up their line of March for Mexico. Accordingly, on the 10th of September, 1850, after the sun had sunk below the horizon, and their patrols had ascertained that no enemy was at hand, they bade farewell to their old friends and started for the Rio Grande. The Creeks were at that time in negotiation with other slave dealers, and waiting their opportunity to make more reprisals. When, therefore, they found that they had gone, they sent a war party in pursuit, which came up with them on the third day. But the Indians found them well armed and prepared for battle, and they did not venture to attack them. They continued their journey safely, crossed the Rio Grande, and settled down at Santa Rosa, where they still remain, and are said to be in circumstances of great prosperity.

ART. III. PARTY POLITICS.

SINCE the hour when man in Eden threw off the government of God, one of the darkest problems which he has been compelled to work at, is how he shall govern himself. That some mode of government is necessary in communities, is clear from the testimony of all human history. Whether king or president, chief or tycoon, be the head, it is conceded that every community must have an acknowledged leader, and that there must be some way provided for settling regularly the great questions which concern public welfare. There must be law more or less definite and formal, and consequently there must be framers and executors of law, clothed with powers of greater or less extent. Revelation, too, has declared government needful, saying that the powers are "ordained of God," and that he who resisteth them "resisteth the ordinance of God."

But while revelation, history, and reason agree in affirming the necessity of governments among men, no political forms are set forth in God's word as the best; and in their efforts to reason out the question, the wisest men have reached different results. History, ancient and modern, testifies that however perfect theories may be, no practical perfection has yet been attained. Under king and president, chief and tycoon, the rights of the citizen are imperfectly guarded, and the public good is only partially secured. A despotism, provided the right man is always upon the throne, is as good a political structure as any other. But those who have founded dynasties in the past were generally far from being the right men. And if one of the world's model rulers were to reign to-day, he would soon be gathered to his fathers, and the responsibility of determining his successor must rest somewhere. Shall the scepter be hereditary or elective? Shall the whole power descend from father to son? Or shall there be two lines of hereditary power, an aristocracy as well as royalty? Or shall all citizens be equal, and power in all its forms be the creation of the popular voice? The nations, by choice, accident, or the will of God, have tried these various modes of solving the great problem, and found them all practically more or less defective. Man is fallen, and to attempt political perfection is to try to "bring a clean thing out of an unclean."

In these United States we are trying the popular principle. The corner-stone of our system is that governments are instituted solely

for the benefit of the governed, and that the will of the people is the only legitimate source of power. We are trying what the rest of the world declares to be a doubtful experiment. Among our own people, there are those who feel that we are not succeeding so triumphantly as to warrant us in laying aside care and caution, or in forgetting that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." No one dreams that a change of form would be beneficial, or that an emperor or a dictator would better secure the public weal than a president. There is universal confidence in the principle upon which our system is based; and if any man should set himself up as a political reformer, and advocate a monarchy or a hereditary aristocracy, he would encounter more ridicule than either persecution or argument.

Still, no intelligent American is wholly satisfied with the political state of the country, or believes that we are working our beautiful theory as well as we might. Practically, there are defects and abuses which are annoying, and which threaten to become grievous, if they are not so already. In the general politics of the world, there is no complaint that we lack energy or courage in asserting our national rights. We feel that we are powerful. The Americans, from their intelligence, their physical strength, their activity, their quickness to see and to do, as well as their native valor, are probably the best material in the world for soldiers and sailors, and our resources for resistance to invasion are boundless. Our commercial value to the rest of the world secures for us more deference than might otherwise be paid us, and our people go abroad among the nations with heads erect, knowing that our flag is the symbol of courage and power, and that a vigorous hand will be laid upon those who disregard its claims to respect.

Nor has the American much to complain of at home in regard to his own personal rights. He enjoys the largest liberty possible in an organized community. Speech is as free as the atmosphere that bears its utterances. In religion he may be Christian, Jew, deist, or atheist, as conviction or folly prompts, and the state lays no penalty on him for the style of his own belief, nor taxes him to support any other. His share of the expense of government, levied directly or indirectly, when compared with that paid by the citizens of almost every other civilized land, is small and insignificant. The demand for mental and manual laborers is so great that men escape the despotism of capital. In mind, body, and estate, the American is the freest civilized man that treads the earth.

And yet the American complains, and has reason to complain, of the defective workings of the government which is his pride. One valid complaint which may be uttered against it is that it costs more

than it should. It is true the eighty millions annually expended by the general government appear small beside the annual expenditure of England or France. Still, we have a right to object if the citizen is taxed, directly or indirectly, two dollars when one would suffice. And who, that has caught a glimpse of the inner wheels and bands of our political machine, doubts that one dollar, honestly and judiciously managed, would do as much as two now accomplish?

Again, our high offices are not as invariably filled by our best men, as the good of the people demands. It is a hard saying, yet it is asserted, with some seeming of truth, that men of the high morals and inflexible integrity which Christianity inculcates are really unpopular as candidates, and that, in some localities, they are as carefully excluded from official station as if there was some constitutional bar to their election. The genius of our institutions demands that the best citizens be the leaders of the people, and the republican theory presumes this to be the fact. Yet the first men: of the nation have more than once been set aside for men comparatively unknown. Clay, Calhoun, and Webster stand forth as a great triumvirate of genius, eloquence, and patriotism. They were the three mighties" of their day, and yet the highest office in the gift of the people was beyond their grasp, while men of less ability as statesmen, and less known, were elevated to the presidency. There may be a reason, such as it is, for this. Men of great power, who act as leaders of parties for years, provoke personal hostility in their various intellectual encounters; they are regarded with jealousy by the little men, who can attain in their shadow only a pale and spindling growth. Or they may be so identified with sectional strifes that their election would be humiliating to their opponents, and consequently their nomination would call forth a degree of resistance which another man, equally sound in the political faith, would not elicit. When circumstances of this nature prompt the thinkers of a party to place before the people some comparatively unknown candidate, we confess that, after the fashion of the children of this world, they are wise in their generation, and may sometimes even claim that their policy is magnanimous. But when political operators select some obscure man, who has never done anything of importance, nor even said anything of significance, because they wish to vary their representations of his principles to suit the local tastes, prejudices, and interests of different sections, the scheme is false, fraudulent, treacherous. Both the great parties have, at times, adopted the policy of nominating for high office men of a secondary degree of publicity; and as there may have been a plausible reason for adopting this plan, we will not charge it upon them

as a crime. Nor will we find fault if, now and then, a man not of the very purest morals is elected to fill some responsible place-for instance, a seat in the national or state legislature. It certainly is not practicable, and it may not be wise, to fill up the legislative ranks with men who are greatly above the moral average of the community. Civil laws must be adapted to the condition of the governed. If the law-makers are too far above the level of those for whom they act, there will be a liability to run into legislation which, in the abstract, is wise and right, yet really impracticable and useless. What kind of a legislature would the Pilgrim Fathers have made for a community of common sinners? We are not prepared, therefore, to insist upon it that all high offices must be filled with the strictest and sternest of Christian men.

In our excessive desire to be politically amiable and accommodating, we are prepared to go a step beyond this, and say that we will not complain if here and there a bad man is found in office. What if a gambler, a swindler, or a grogbruiser be found sitting among law-makers, do not gamblers, swindlers, and grogbruisers dwell in this goodly land? And we ask, triumphantly, Is not ours a representative government? Let us be calm and philosophical. When we see, by the legislative reports, that there is a professor of the "manly art" in the state capitol, sent thither by the votes of the enlightened citizens of the Five Points in New York, or Bedford-street in Philadelphia, we feel that there is some plausibility in his claim to a place in Albany or Harrisburgh, inasmuch as he represents well, luminously, beautifully, the chivalry of his locality. And so we reason when another makes his appearance in our halls of national legislation with a revolver or two in his pocket, and a bowie-knife tucked daintily inside his vest. There is a class of which each is the exponent, and the fitting representative. And since these classes really exist, why should not good citizens be reminded of the fact, especially while they are engaged in framing criminal law? These "Honorables" will of course resist the passage of any statute that threatens to interfere with their peculiar "rights," or in any way cramp their genius; and perhaps, owing to the animated style of their elocution, they will brandish fists or bowie-knives in debate, or possibly enliven the dull monotony of routine deliberation by a rough-and-tumble fight on the floor; but, in all this, they merely represent their faction. Good and right law will encounter opposition; and since it must come, is it not well to be warned of it beforehand, to know what passions it will rouse, what sophistries it will bring to the surface, what resistance it must overcome?