Year: 1859

There are two radically diverse ways disappearing
and serving great cause-wc trust we may not in
vidiously distinguish them the large way and the
small one. The latter is tenacious of FORMS &c-N.
Y. Tribune.


The use of the adjectives '1arge" and
'small," descriptive of party measures and
party policy, is a chronic weakness of the Tri-
bune. 1t would have been more satisfactory to
the public conscience to have said that the two
radically diverse ways of serving great cause,
were, the right way and the wrong way. But,
by contemplating so often the size of parties,
rather than their tone and character it has
come into the constant use of adjectives Of di-
mension, in cases where terms of moral signif-
cance would be more desirable and appropri-
ate


The sincerity and the zeal of the Tribune, as
an exponent ofRepublican sentiment, is not to
be questioned but its theory of political man.
agement seems to us radically wrong Its
plans for campaign its outlines of policy its
most insignificant strategies, are predicated on
the idea that all that is needed for the finished
renovation ofthe country is a-large party 1t
is not for us, who have labored SO long, and, we





triumphant party in Massachusetts-it is not
for us to say that large parties are not very ex-
celent things, when we know of what materials
they have been made. The philosophical re-
Election of Mr. Weller deserves a general an
plication. The uncertainty, whether your veal
pies are ''weaF or kittens, is not calculated to
INSPIRE ta command respect
But such parties must have something more
than the uncertain attractions of power or
they are worse than useless. Without some
accurately defined and positive mission, some
large and permanent principles common to the
mass of them, they are sure to fall in pieces
during the first storm.


In ene sense, parties, like poets, are born,
not made. When circumstances require them,
they are, somehow or other, brought into life
The virtue that is in them attracts like the
loadstene. Jobbers are always ready to tinker
them with coalitions, and shape their fairest
features for the qualification of the Scribes
and Pharisees. But, the nature of the thing
is smarter than the best of them. Vari-
GUS scions may be grated upon one tree but
the fruit waits on the slow processes of assimi-
lation and growth. If those who are begin
ming, so early, to manage" the campaign of
1860, would have amore patient confidence in
the people and in the strength of their cause
would rely more on the power of just princi
pies, and less on the accidental alliances which
may be concocted between men ofdifferent opin-
ions, and geographical sections, success would
be just as certain and near, as it can be under
the shrewdest of management 1t would be
nearly as well if it were not so. For an oppo-
sition with common purpose, and an honest
integrity, is more powerful than an Admins
tration with divided counses, united only by
the fragile cohesion of plunder, or the memory
of coalition.


Really, we cannot think the Republican par
ty, in its aourishing and hopeful estate, is just
the subject for the discarded articles of the old
parties to be practiced upon. If it were like
some other parties that have returned or are
returning, to the limbo out of which they never
ought to have sprung, born for no particular
purpose and leading short, fitful and merce-
nary life, it might be polite to squeeze out
whatever virtue there may be in the cheap ex-
pedients and devices, which, like the gamblers
props, are peculiar incidents of bad morals.
But it is an institution of quite different kind.
Though, today it only demands that slavery
shail not be extended, yet it contemplates the
ultimate extinction of slavery by law. For,
certainly, we are not SO short-siglted as not to
see that system so hostile to Republican gov
ernment and to the moral sense of mankind, is
necessarily aggressive; and that it must be
either victorious or wholly extinguished This
is not the work of day or generation We
fear that we expose ourselves to the disgust of
the unconditional advocates of expansion when
we say that it is not work which can be
achieved, wholly or mainly, by mere engineer
ing, or the arts of designing men,