e
conduct of the almost irresponsible executive head of the Republic.
What, then, have been Mr. Cushing's political antecedents, and what
is his present creed?

There are many points of resemblance between his character and
career and those of the present Chancellor of the English Exchequer.
Belonging to a part of the country whose opinions are to all intents
and purposes politically proscribed, he has gone over to a party
whose whole policy has tended to harass the commerce, to cripple the
manufactures, and to outrage the moral sense of New England, and has
won advancement and prominence in that party by his talents,
contriving at the same time to make his origin a service rather than
a detriment. Like Mr. Disraeli, he has been consistent only in
devotion to success. Like him, accomplished, handsome, plucky,
industrious, and dangerous, if unconvincing, in debate, he brings to
bear on every question the immediate force of personal courage and
readiness, but none of that force drawn from persistent principle,
whose defeats are tutorings for victory. With a quick eye for the
weak point of an enemy, and a knack of so draping commonplaces with
rhetoric that they shall have the momentary air of profound
generalizations, he is also, like him, more cunning in expedients
than capable of far-seeing policy. Adroit in creating and fostering
prejudice, acute in drawing metaphysical distinctions which shall
make wrong seem right by showing that it is less wrong than it
appeared, he is unable to see that public opinion is never moulded
by metaphysics, and that, with the people, instinct is as surely
permanent as prejudice is transitory. Like Mr. Disraeli, versatile,
he is liable to forget that what men admire as a grace in the
intellect they condemn as a defect in the character and conduct.
Gifted, like him, with various talents, he has one which overshadows
all the rest,--the faculty of inspiring a universal want of
confidence. As a popular leader, the advantage which daring would
have given him is more than counterpoised by an acuteness and
refinement of mind which have no sympathy with the mass of men, and
which they in turn are likely to distrust from imperfect
comprehension. Ill-adapted for the rough-and-tumble contests of a
Democracy, he is admirably fitted to be the minister or the head of
an oligarchical Republic. We wish all our Northern Representatives
had the boldness and the abilities, we hope none of them will be
sedu