gher
law than human interest and cupidity. Both of them represent not
merely the narrow principles of a section, but the still narrower and
more selfish ones of a caste. Both of them, to be sure, have
convenient phrases to be juggled with before election, and which mean
one thing or another, or neither one thing nor another, as a
particular exigency may seem to require; but since both claim the
regular Democratic nomination, we have little difficulty in divining
what their course would be after the fourth of March, if they should
chance to be elected. We know too well what regular Democracy is, to
like either of the two faces which each shows by turns under the same
hood. Everybody remembers Baron Grimm's story of the Parisian showman,
who in 1789 exhibited the _royal_ Bengal tiger under the new character
of _national_, as more in harmony with the changed order of things.
Could the animal have lived till 1848, he would probably have found
himself offered to the discriminating public as the _democratic_ and
_social_ ornament of the jungle. The Pro-slavery party of this country
seeks the popular favor under even more frequent and incongruous
_aliases_; it is now _national_, now _conservative_, now
_constitutional_; here it represents Squatter-Sovereignty, and there
the power of Congress over the Territories; but, under whatever name,
its nature remains unchanged, and its instincts are none the less
predatory and destructive. Mr. Lincoln's position is set forth with
sufficient precision in the platform adopted by the Chicago
Convention; but what are we to make of Messrs. Bell and Everett? Heirs
of the stock in trade of two defunct parties, the Whig and
Know-Nothing, do they hope to resuscitate them? or are they only like
the inconsolable widows of Pere la Chaise, who, with an eye to former
customers, make use of the late Andsoforth's gravestone to advertise
that they still carry on the business at the old stand? Mr. Everett,
in his letter accepting the nomination, gave us only a string of
reasons why he should not have accepted it at all; and Mr. Bell
preserves a silence singularly at variance with his patronymic. The
only public demonstration of principle that we have seen is an
emblematic bell drawn upon a wagon by a single horse, with a man to
lead him, and a boy to make a nuisance of the tinkling symbol as it
moves along. Are all the figures in this melancholy procession equally
emblematic? If so, which of the two cand