The Express.
London, England, 1856-11-22 00:00:00

AMERICA.

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

[The following la an extract of a private letter from a
distinguished and judinieu AloollCan] :

NEW YORK, Noy. c.
We have not elected Fremont, but we are not
beaten and not discouraged. The spirit of our party
to day is most cheering. Without a day's delay_
the moment almost that the result is known—re-
organisation commences, and efficient schemes for
educating the people to resist the power of the
slave holding capitalists are initiated.

NEW YORK, Nov. 8.
The contest which has for many months been
convulsing the whole Union has at lut been
brought to a close--at least in so for as the rival
claims of the three candidate; for the presidency are
concerned. Buchanan goes to encounter new carts
and anxieties in the White House, and Fremont and
Fillmore have at least the cocsolation of knowing
that all the arts and influences of the most skilful
electioneering the world has ever seen have been
exhausted in their favour.

You have been long in the habit of supposing in
England that you were adepts in the art of work-
ing up majorities amongst the poseessors of the
hvaoitinu. wyssoudemfeaustedt ,looit wkasto,asthaisgesniedreal
orfulet,ry
haeftweraetevre
franchise, and when a candidate for a seat in the
available means of winning votes had been tried in
to
learn that the art of conducting elections in the old
cote try is still in its infancy, and that the happiest
efforts of the most energetic of your agents, " W. B."
himself not excepted, are, when compared with the
elaborate tactics of transstlantic politicians, but
clumsy bungling after all. It is not my purpose to
say one word upon the ironies which have lent to this
struggle so much of its bitterness sir d animosity—
the principles for which the two great parties con-
tend receive full justice in your columns from abler
hands; but it may interest some of your readers to
notice a few of those features in the mode of carry-
ing on the contest which strike a bystanding
"Britisher" as most novel and curious. To understand
more clearly the keenness and heat with which the
struggle has been conducted we must remember that
probably at no period since the revolution basso large
a mass of the population descended into the political
arena. For a long while back the pettiness and tn.
utility of all public questions, the absence of any
greatdanger to public eafety or public morals, the
veryinsignificance of the issue for which politicians
wrangled and fought, furnished the timid, the hide.
lent, the phlegmatic, the rich, the refined, and the
pious, with a good and valid excuse for complete
seclusion from public affairs. The meat had long
1, ago been devoured, and It was left to cars of the
meaner sort to snarl over the bones end gristle. It
was reserved for the Border Ruffians to bring the
" respectable " portion of the American public into
the field—that portion of which we have been lately
hearing eo much and seeing so little, that in Eng-
land an impression was very generally getting abroad
that it was composed of mythical personages
of much the earns stamp as Mrs. Harris,
always at band to point a moral, adorn a
tale, or lend lustre to an aphorism, but affording
no tangible proof of her existence—persons power-
less at the polling booth, powerless in the courts of
law, and powerless in the legislature. Culoael Fre-
mont has enjoyed the rare honour of bringing to the
ballot-box men who for years so more thought of
exercising the franohise, or troubling themselves
about the result of a presidential election, than of
getting drunk in taverns or beating their wives.
To be sure it is not devotion to him personally
which bas brought about this wonderful re-
sult ; but to the principle which he is thought
worthy of representing, a principle so power.
ful that the task of representing it is perhaps
as great an honour as any which the republic has in
its gift. For him, lawyers have for the nonce left
their clients to shift for themselves, abandoned books
and pleas, and gone on " atumping " expeditions, as
canvassing is called here; for him, merchants, for a
wonder, have grown indignant over wrongs which
were not felt in the money market, have ceased to be
" practical," and have, many of them for the first time
in their lives, devoted days, every hour of which was
worth untold gold, to the manifold labours of ward
club. and committees ; end for him, too, popular
preachers have scandalised the straitlaced and the
rowdies by political discourses from the pulpit.
On the Friday preceding the election, a " masa
meeting" of working men convened in the Fremont
interest was held in the Academy of Music, at
which many of the idiosyncrasies of American elec.
tioneeriog were very fairly exemplified. The
Academy of Music, I may mention, to, tout bonnement,
that which on the other side of the water is called an
opera-house, and received this euphonious designation
with the view, it is said, of thus entrapping the
reli-
gions public into ritronising the lyric drains. The
flimsy device, I need hardly say, has not succeeded,
and the "Academy" is just as great an abomination
in certain circles as if it had been called by its right
name. A theatre it is, and a very fine one, splendidly
decorated and lighted, and fitted up with boxes and
stalls, pit and gallery, jut as it it were admitted in
this country that all men were not equal, and that
somebody had a better right to a good place than
anybody else. The theory of social equality so
rigidly carried out in railway travelling oere, and
which at least has the inconvenience of occasioully
bringing one into unplessantly close contact with
excellent citizens of dirty habits, seems to be meg-
' lased nowhere else. The custom which prevails of
some people Bedew in finer houses than their neigh-
bours brings down no special reprobation, and the
much more galling distinction of places in the theatre
seems to meet with as large an amount of cpproval as
fa the most aristocratic country of the O'd World. The
rich man goes to the boxes and the poor man to the
pit, and nobody grumbles. So much for theories. But
tf any one had round his republican sensibilities out-
raged by the line of demarcation bet wren rich and poor
on representation nights, he fouledsome amends in the
demonstration of this day week, when the whole
house, from top to bottom, was abandoned indiecri-
minstely to the sovereign people, who came some-
thing like five thousand strong. Colonel Fremont
ors-
copied one of the stage boxes, but did not allow him-
self. There was a baud of music in the orcht str Land the
proceedings, ea soon as the chair had been taken, were
opened by singing a song composed for the occasion,
and dilating on the wrongs of Kansas, to the air of
the " Marselllaise." A portion of the audience
joined in the chorus, but the principal performers
were four professional singers, of dilapidated appear-
ance, who seemed sorely puzzled, as they stood at the
footlights, to know bow to dispose of their hands.
After nearly every speech there was a rag, some-
times heroic but often doggret, now in praise of
Fremont and cow in ridicule or denunciation of some
of his opponents. All the little arta that can influence
the feelings of the uneducated were unsparingly re-
sorted to. In the refrain of a long lampoon upon
Brooks, the editor of a Keow•Nething journal, an
imitation of a dog's barking produced a proligious
effect ; and Buchanan's name, pronounced Buck-anan,
regul.rly brought down the house. The leaders on
the stage seemed to enjoy this as much as any-
body, or at least enjoyed the effect it seemed
to produce on the audience. The speeches, with
one or two exceptions, were of a much more
" flowery " cast than would generally be tolerated
on a similar occasion in England. The style of
oratory which seemed most effective was of decidedly
a Young Ireland turn, such as that for which Mr.
Meagher of the Sword was at one time famous. oas
of the speakers, who seemed quite an adept in It,
boasted every second or third sentence of his extreme
youth, of the very short period which had elapsed
facile he was a baby in his mother's arms, and
defended Colonel Fremont against the accusa-
tion of being a young man, with great fire and
energy ; he was vigorously applauded. The musto
and the songs are, as you will perceive, a mode of in-
fluencing the feelings of the electors never used in
this way in England, side by aide with speeches.
During the proceedings a volunteer corps of artillery,
whose banner was suspended over our heads on
the stage, and whose motto was, "We never
surrender," made their appearance. marching is
eagle file right on to the platform. Outside, at the
door, they had one of their guns, a three-poundnre
from which, at the conclusion of the proceeding*,