The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-12-14

any gallery out of New York A valuable
benefit would be conferred OR the art interests
Of our city by number Of gentlemen uniting
to buy this work, with view to rendering 1t
the first object in a collection to be hereafter
formed and supported by our public. We are
satisfied that there is enough patriotic spirit
amongst our wealthy citizens to induce them
to do this, and that it requires but the sugges-
ton for them to act upon it.
The Array or Factions and the ConaAng
Commercial Crisis-who In tho Man for
tho Emergency
The journals and politicians are abusing us
on all sides, and accusing us of all sorts Of con-
Trajectory things. One makes US the special
organ of the President another knows that we
supply brains to the whole democratic party, q
third insists upon it that we are aiming to
break up the North, a fourth accuses us Of
being the great abolition emissary and in
cendiary of the South, fifth finds that all
the democratic Senators and representatives
in Congress are doing exactly what we tell
them to do and nothing more, the Chevalier
Webb is afraid that we have sold ourselves to
Louis Napoleon, and are bent on destroying
the country, and many others confidently
believe that we are determined to kick ND the
devil generally in the political, social and com.
mercial affairs of the world.
The present is not the first time that we have
been abused, because we have contemplated
with unbiased eye the tendency of events and
of the public intoxication, and, pointing out
with logical precision the inevitable re-
suits that must accrue in disaster, have
resolutely set ourselves in opposition
to the mania of the day. On numerous
other occasions the merchants, financiers, poll.
ticians, and other class interests, have abused
us without stint for telling them plain truths,
and giving them warnings disagreeable at the
time, but which they afterwards wished they
had followed. In 1869 we constantly held
up to them the dangers to which they were ad-
vancing in the mad career of speculation that
then was rife. When the bitter revulsion came
thousands acknowledged that the HERALD was
right, and lamented they had not listened to its
counsels. Twenty years later we saw q recur-
renee of the same public intoxication, and
again we resisted the popular delirium; we
were abused without stint or measure until
the reaction Of the fever of speculation
brought season of calm retrospection, when
all again acknowledged that the HERALD had
been right and regretted their own blindness.
We are again entering upon career Of pub
lie danger which threatens to bring upon the
country a commercial and financial revulsion
far greater than this continent has ever before
witnessed. It is not now the bursting of the
temporary bubbles of speculation towards
which the country is driving but it is the COM
plete destruction of the very foundations of our
material organization and prosperity. 1t is a
danger which threatens to involve every family
and every man in ruin. The conduct of public
affairs has been given up to pettifogging politi-
clans and demagogues, each intent on some in
significant scheme of private interest, and none
of whom is capable of rising above the rule of
personal and local influences. A share in pub
lie contracts, the bestowal of the public patron
age, and the motives that determine ward or
district election, are the only guides to their
conduct as public and representative men, at
time when the entire country is Fastening to
state of irritation and conflict that threatens to
whelm oil classes in a common ruin. The rapid
tide of prosperity in which we have SO long
been joyously swimming has led us to confound
the result with the cause, and to believe that
the current will always run, whether the origi-
nal sources be destroyed or not
In this blind and ignorant confidence the
public mind is giving itself up to the frenzy
Of local disputes and sectional squabbles, which
are fast loosening the bands of the Union and
sapping the foundations of the prosperity of
each of its members. The statesmen of former
days, whose voices are not hushed in death,
have been set aside and almost forgotten. One
of them alone remains in public life, and
he is ON the eve of retiring to that rcpose
to which a long career of patriotic services
entities him. Mr.. Buchanan contends
almost single handed against the factions in
Congress, the sinking of patriotism in self in
public men, and the blind corruption that has
fastened itself upon the party organizations of
the day. He is not and will not become q
candidate tor another Presidential term,
although he is the man that offers the most
guarantees to the hopes of patriotism. There
is therefore but one course left to the men who
would preserve the great Inheritance our
fathers left us, and which it is our duty to be-
queath to our children. They must fix their
choice on some man as aPresidential candidate
who has past career that can be appealed to
to calm the delirium which selfish politicians
are fostering and forcing in the public mind,
whose national services shall awaken the ma
tional remembrance and feeling, and whose
character shall give guarantee of pacific
solution of the political difficulties which now
menace with destruction our domestic rela-
tons, our commerce and our industrial intc-
rests. There is but one man in the country
that fills these conditions and that man "a