evidence of fitness for
the chief magistracy; and the event has shown, that Mr. Buchanan was to
be regarded as an old politician rather than a practised statesman, that
the most serviceable soldier in the ranks may prove to be an indifferent
general in command,--and that the experience, for which he was vaunted
and trusted, was not that ripening discipline of the mind and heart,

-------"which doth attain
To something of prophetic strain,"--

but that other unlearning use and wont, which

----"chews on wisdom past,
And totters on in blunders to the last."

His administration has been a series of blunders, and worse; it
has evinced no mastery; on the other hand, it may be arraigned for
inconsistencies the most palpable, for proceedings the most awkward, for
a general impotence which places it on a level with that of Tyler or
Pierce, and for signal offences against the national sense of decorum
and duty.

It is scarcely a year since Mr. Buchanan assumed the reins at
Washington. He assumed them under circumstances by which he and his
party and the whole country had been taught a great lesson of
political duty. The infamous mismanagement of Kansas, by his immediate
predecessor, had just shattered the most powerful of our party
organizations, and caused a mighty uprising of the masses of the North
in defence of menaced freedom. His election was carried amid the
extremest hazards, and with the utmost difficulty. Two months more of
such ardent debate and such popular enlightenment as were then going
forward would have resulted in his defeat. As it was, nearly every
Northern State--no matter how firm its previous adherence to the
Democratic party--was aroused to a strenuous opposition. Nearly every
Northern State pronounced by a stupendous majority against him and
against his cause. Nothing but a systematic disguise of the true
questions at issue by his own party, and a gratuitous complication of
the canvass by means of a foolish third party, saved his followers from
the most complete and shameful rout that had been given for many years
to any political array. Men of every class, of every shade of faith,
joined in that hearty protest against the spirit which animated the
Democratic administration, and joined in it, that they might utter the
severest rebuke in their power, of its meanness and perfidy.

Mr. Buchanan ought to have read the warning which was thus blazed across
the political skies, like the hand-wri