the indefinite extension of slavery. Hence the brazen impudence of the appeal which was made to that class of men, in New York, a few weeks ago, urging them, by the consideration of their immediate interest in the Southern trade, to contribute the money with which Connecticut was to be subdued and brought over to the policy of extending slavery into new territories. Here is just now the imminent danger. The danger is, that the great commercial interest which flourishes not merely on the proceeds of slave labor, but on the proceeds of the slave market-the men who buy and sell in marble palaces, and whose tide of gain flows and ebbs with the fluctuations in the price of human flesh, will make large offerings from their profits, realized or expected, to the political party which they regard as most likely to repay them, with usury, in the event of its success. That great commercial interest of the slave trade-not the African slave trade, but the American-is likely to be a fountain of money always available for purposes of political corruption, so long as there shall remain a hope of making the Federal Government auxiliary to the schemes for extending the area of slavery.

Another temptation to the crime we are considering—or rather, another source of money ever available for the perpetuation of this crime-is found in that organization and arrangement of parties under which every office in the country, save those from which the incumbent cannot be removed, becomes a prize to be won or lost in every election. Hardly anything in the working of our institutions is more ominous to the thoughtful lover of his country, than the steady progress, and now, at last, unquestioned establishment of the principle that all offices, whether directly in the gift of the people, or in the gift of the Federal Government or of the government of a state, or in the gift of a municipal administration, are to be distributed as rewards of party services, and that all removable functionaries are to be removed from office, whenever the party under which they hold loses the power. By the force of this principle, now so firmly established, all the emoluments of all disposable offices are an immense pecuniary interest which is staked on the result of every election,

and especially of a Presidential election. The salaries, the official fees and perquisites, the lucrative contracts, the day wages of thousands and thousands of men, are put at hazard, to be gained by one party and lost by the other. In such a case, if money can do anything, the money will not be wanting. Cannot a party in power always raise money for all party purposes by an assessment upon office-holders, in proportion to the value of their offices? Is not that method of raising money an established system? Are not lucrative of fices often given to hungry aspirants with the express condition that a certain portion of the emoluments shall be paid over for the use and benefit of the party? Is it not well understood that the office-holder who refuses to pay his assessment, loses his place? Such a system, most obviously, tends to place at the disposal of party managers indefinite and unknown amounts of money, which can hardly fail to be employed in procuring, directly or indirectly, by one method or another, the perpetration of the great crime against the right of suffrage. And, what is even more detestable, such a system, perseveringly kept up, is sure to establish, if not in the higher places of trust and emolument, at least in a thousand petty places of dependence on Custom Houses and the Post Office Department, and in those inferior offices of which the government of a large city is so full, men of the lowest order of morals-men whose habits and associations enable them, in spite of all ordinary vigilance, and especially under a conniving or careless superintendence of elections, to overflow the ballot boxes, if they will, with votes which have no right to be there.

Coördinate with all this, and naturally connected with it, is another practice which is sufficient of itself to put any amount of money for criminal uses, into the hands of the vilest tools of party. We mean the immoral and every way mischievous practice of betting on the result of an election. There is an intrinsic immorality in such wagers. The transaction is not of the nature of insurance, but purely of the nature of gambling. All the principles which evince the intrinsic immorality of betting on a horse race, on a cock fight,

[May, on the throwing of dice, on any game of chance or skill, evince the immorality of betting on the result of an election. But this is not all. Every man who makes a wager on the result of a pending election, puts two persons at least--himself and the other party in the transaction-under a strong temptation to use, directly or indirectly, corrupt and fraudulent means of influencing the result. Whatever honor there may be among thieves, there is none among gamblers, save that which pays "debts of honor" at the expense of honesty; and he is fit only to be plucked, who believes that a gambler will not cheat him if he can. The man whose moral principles are so infirm that he has yielded to temptation, and has hazarded his money on such a chance as this, will of course be tempted-and the probability is that he will be effectually tempted-to yield his connivance, at least, to measures and proceedings against which he would otherwise have protested with honest indig

nation.

No honest man, who is tempted to show his confidence in the success of his party, by the offer or acceptance of a wager, should permit himself to forget, for one moment, how directly, and with what force of motive power, this widely tolerated practice operates to promote and procure the crime against the right of suffrage. If you offer any man a wager on a pending election-or what is the same thing, if you accept his offer of a wager—what is that you promise him? What is the nature of your contract with him? You have said to him, in effect, just this: "Sir, there is a certain sum of money deposited in safe hands; if your party will manage to get votes enough into the ballot-boxes to carry your candidate into office over the candidate of my party, the money shall be yours." The man with whom you have made such a contract is not likely to be overscrupulous in the use of means. He can af ford to occupy his time-he can afford, if the wager is large, to hire other men who shall employ their time and their welltried skill in all the low and villainous arts by which the people are defrauded of their right to choose their own serAnd if the practiced criminals who infest great cities, and who, having made political knavery their speciality, know

vants.

how to crowd false votes into the ballot-boxes in spite of every precaution as practised burglars know how to carry on their trade in spite of improved locks and the metropolitan police can find men enough to promise them money in this way; they have a fund at their command, with which they can accomplish anything. Thus a party without one honest chance of success may sometimes be carried into power by the funds which the unprincipled, heedless, gambling avarice of its adversaries has placed at its disposal.

We have taken it upon ourselves, in this Article, to hold up before the public one great political danger of our country-a danger growing every year more formidable-a danger for which, as we have intimated, no one party is alone responsible. The danger is, that the ever increasing facilities, and ever multiplying instruments for the perpetration of the great crime against the right of suffrage, will be used more and more, on all sides, in times of high political excitement, and soon, perhaps, at every return of a popular election; and that thus the public sentiment in regard to the atrocity of the crime will be more and more demoralized, and the public confidence in what purports to be the expression of the people's will, and in all the working of our republican institutions, will be more and more impaired, till the nation shall perish in its own corruption.

The trust which God has committed to the free citizens of these states, is such as was never before committed to any people. As we think of that great trust, and of the great interests of humanity, throughout the world and through all coming ages, which are dependent on the fidelity with which that trust is kept;-as we remember how manifestly and rapidly, according to the testimony and the mutual crimination of all parties, this crime against the right of suffrage, this foulest and most loathsome form of treason against the very principle of popular self-government, is permitted to increase;— as we see how little sense there seems to be of the extreme baseness of all collusion with such a crime;--as we see how the conviction seems to spread that frauds of this kind are an inevitable incident, if not a necessary element in political

affairs; we cannot but ask ourselves, Will not God be avenged for such an abuse of such a trust? Will not the displeasure of God manifest itself against a people so trusted, who permit so great a trust to be taken from them, not by violence which they cannot resist, but by demoralizing influences which they might suppress and eradicate, but which, in their folly, they neglect? Such a people need only be left to themselves, and how speedily will they work out their own signal punishment! Children will be their princes--no, not children but men far more unfit than children to bear the symbols of authority; men known as criminals, and guilty of the grossest frauds in private as well as in public affairs, will rule over them; and they will be "oppressed every one by another, and every one by his neighbor."