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|331| THE LAST CHIEF EXECUTIVE.

We had determined to say nothing of the dead Administration. We had wished that so weak and wicked a career should pass at once and utterly into oblivion, and the nation forget that they had ever made so sad an experiment of being governed by Chance. Forever to bury its memory—this, we felt, would be most desirable to all ; for as very few were found to follow it to the grave, so none, we were persuaded, could wish hereafter to know its ghost.

But an Olympiad of guilt and folly is not so easily forgotten. An entire people betrayed, befooled and insulted, for a period of four years, cannot fail to carry with them a bitter remembrance. It can be none the less bitter and abiding, that a universal and profound contempt has long taken the place of indignation ; since men had far rather be angry with their government, than blush for it. In view, therefore, of this—that the faith, so sacredly and deeply pledged to the strong necessities of the country, was summarily broken, like a rotten staff ; that the great measures of relief for which the People had so sternly struggled, were by him—a leader !—contemptuously snatched from their victorious hands ; that all the cherished principles, by proclaiming which he had alone dared to creep into a position to stumble upon power, were one by one blown away, like words spoken upon the wind ; that rapidly, beyond all precedent, the floodgates of corruption were thrown open—the Curule Chair surrounded by unblushing claimants for offices not yet empty, quick credence given to every tale that could please the ‘Roman’s’ | ear, men thrust from their seats without fault, to make room for others that came without merit, and power and place everywhere bought and sold, openly, as money in the Jewish Temple ;—that his own provident cupidity, meanwhile, grew rich from sales, and contracts, and other public services ; that—worse than this—the ancient dignity of the Commonwealth was constantly and recklessly violated, and the lustre of the national name began to sully, so that no citizen of this Republic could for years, at home or abroad, speak of its Chief Ruler without a feeling of shame ; and—more than all—that he dared to encroach upon the sacred Constitution, and paid his hollow court to a hollow party, only less unprincipled than himself—grasping idly at still larger power, like an infant for added baubles which it has not skill to hold :—in view of these things, and remembering that no keeping of silence can avail to blot them from the Records of History, it seemed well not to appear to other nations and other times insensible, at least, to our disgrace—and with hasty justice, as the public career of this man closed—how differently from its beginning !—we sat down with an indignant pen, and this line from the Great Dramatist before us—

“We are peremptory to destroy this traitorous viper.”

But while our pen yet lingered on the bitter words of our motto, still another mood came over us. We were struck with profound sorrow, that any man |332| should, for any object, so utterly fling away the heritage of a fair fame, and almost every better trait of a once estimable public character. We felt, moreover, a species of apprehension for the future of our country, where such vast means of corruption, such manifold temptations to the corruptible, exist in the appliances of executive patronage ; and where the possession of such appliances in a single hand, may, at any time, lead one—too weak to control himself, or too despotic to forbear the control of others—into grasping at unlimited power. We were filled, too, with the deepest regret, that the Whig party should ever have been the means, however inadvertently, of raising such a man to so responsible and dangerous a post ;—with admiration, also, that in his total abandonment of all faith, and principle, and decent doctrine, he should have found so ready and warm a welcome in the bosom of the Democracy. Towards even the recreant himself, we began to experience a kind of relenting, as for one who had been the peculiar spoiled pet of Circumstances—always tumbling, by some hap-hazard felicitous rap from one or another of them, into some marvellous good fortune, till at last he had fallen upon a position for which he was hopelessly unfit.

With such a blending of feelings, then, do we proceed with a short, unembellished narrative respecting the late Chief Executive. In a simple statement of even a few facts, at such a period, some useful lessons may be learned : certainly we have far other motives than merely to vituperate one who has once been at the head of the nation.

We have no personal animosity to gratify, nor have we a feeling on this subject that is not entertained, to a greater or less degree, by nearly all men of all parties. We do not pray for any interposition of Providence, as a punishment upon the head of an unfaithful servant ; on the contrary, we desire him to have “time and space for repentance ;” and to refresh his memory, and aid him in this pious undertaking, we design to “set his sins in order before him.”

In the month of December, 1839, there was assembled at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a National Whig Convention, composed of delegates from every Congressional District in the Union, to discharge the important duty of selecting candidates for the office of President and Vice President. There had been no merely | political convention for many years, to the proceedings of which the people looked with greater anxiety. They were the representatives of a constituency numbering a large majority of the American people. The dynasties of Jackson and Van Buren had been grievous and oppressive ; the will of the people had been disregarded ; the Constitution and the laws had been wantonly violated ; all classes had suffered, and men of business looked with dismay at the prospects before them. Corruption and peculation had been suffered to grow into a system, until at length a man of reasonably honest character was looked upon with distrust. In this state of things, the people sought for a change both of men and measures ; and this reformation was to be effected by a change in the executive station. The convention was a Whig convention ; its political character was decided ; its objects and aims were of a positive character ; and no man of however mean a capacity could mistake their purposes. For the principles of this party were no secret ; from Maine to Georgia they had been proclaimed on the house-tops ; there was not an orator or a newspaper by whom, or through which their distinctive doctrines had not been again and again promulgated. Many of the prominent leaders of the Whig party were in attendance as delegates at that convention ; many who had grown gray in the public service, and whose commanding abilities and high standing had pointed them out as fit representatives of a great party. Amongst these delegates, and by no means the least vociferous for Whig measures, was John Tyler, of Virginia.

It was here that this gentleman was first brought within the distinct purview of the American people, by the accident of his nomination for Vice-President of this Convention. Prior to that time, it was known to the more intelligent that he had been, at different times, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and of Congress, Governor of the State, and Senator of the United States. The peculiar circumstances under which the more important of these stations had been conferred on him, and which had won for him a popular notoriety in Virginia as the luckiest of living men, were but imperfectly understood beyond the limits of that State. Many steadfast opponents of Jacksonism,—not remembering that he had been elected to the U. S. Senate by a combination |333| of all the anti-Jackson force in the Virginia Legislature, with a small portion of the Jackson party, thus securing him a small majority over John Randolph, who then labored under a suspicion of insanity, and a conviction of utter unfitness for the Senatorial dignity—had a grateful recollection of his votes against some of the most exceptionable of Jackson’s nominations, and his sturdy resistance, at a late period, to the removal of the deposites. From this time (1834) Mr. Tyler had been generally regarded as a Whig, though indulging vagaries, pardonable only in a Virginian of the ‘State Rights’ School. It was not known, out of the State, that he, then a Member of the State Legislature, had incurred the just displeasure and forfeited the confidence of the Whigs of Virginia, by consenting to be proposed and supported by their opponents, aided by a few nominal whig Abstractionists, known as ‘the Impracticables,’ against William C. Rives, the candidate for reelection of nearly the entire Whig force in the Legislature, and who must have been elected but for the conduct of the half dozen ‘Impracticables’ before mentioned.

But Mr. Tyler appeared in the Harrisburg convention an uncompromising Whig, and an ardent supporter of Mr. Clay as the Whig candidate for President. We are assured, indeed, that it was for this reason he was appointed a delegate by his constituents. The majority of the convention, after some three days deliberation, decided to place General Harrison in nomination. This was a sore decision for the supporters of Mr. Clay, numbering nearly half the convention, comprising a very great preponderance of its most able and eminent^*|333| members, and undoubtedly backed by the feelings and wishes—apart from considerations of prudence and policy—of nine-tenths of the entire majority. Nearly the whole public expected the nomination of Mr. Clay by that body. His eminent services in public life for more than a quarter of a century, his commanding abilities, his liberal and manly views on all the great questions of the day, and the warm attachment felt for him personally in every part of the land, all conduced to render him acceptable as a candidate for the Presidency. But we | do not censure the convention for selecting another in his place ; its action was the result of careful and grave deliberation, and an earnestness of purpose moving straight onward to one great object—the relief of the country.

Among those, however, most deeply aggrieved by the preference of General Harrison, was John Tyler, who, by virtue of his being an Ex-Governor, was one of the Vice Presidents for the occasion. The convention adjourned for the night (Thursday) immediately upon the annunciation that General Harrison had been nominated for President. It is understood that Mr. Tyler passed a good part of the ensuing night, in weeping over the decision just made, and in counselling with others of like faith, in the hope of discovering some means by which it might be set aside and Mr Clay still nominated. The project was at length found hopeless, and abandoned.

The selection of a candidate for Vice President to be placed on the same ticket with General Harrison was now an object of deep solicitude. The friends of General Harrison apprehending disaffection, to some extent, among the friends of the great statesman, whose claims to the highest place had been deferred, in obedience to a supposed necessity, insisted that the nomination to the second post should be tendered to and accepted by a known and ardent Clay man. To this end, the Kentucky delegation were asked to permit the nomination of their distinguished compatriot, John J. Crittenden. They declined, having no time to communicate with Mr. Crittenden, and feeling unauthorized to pledge his assent. The North Carolina delegation were then urged to present a fellow citizen for the Vice Presidency, and, on their declining, the names of Governor Dudley and Ex-Goveror Owen of their State were successively suggested to them, but to no purpose. Benjamin Watkins Leigh, a name which recalls the noblest days and the noblest men of Virginia, was likewise pressed to accept the nomination, (being present,) but peremptorily declined it. Last of all, John Tyler was proposed, and, on inquiry, it appeared that no consideration of delicacy, growing out of his position as a delegate to the Convention, and a Vice President of that body, would |334| bar his acceptance. The proposition was rapidly concurred in, those who had suggested other names withdrew them, and John Tyler was unanimously nominated as the Vice President of the United States.

These facts are here stated to refute the utterly baseless, but incessantly reiterated falsehood, that Mr. Tyler was selected as the candidate because of his notorious hostility to a United States Bank. There exists no shadow of foundation for it. True, there was no nomination of Vice President prior to that of Mr. T.—there was no formal tender of the nomination to any other person. Time was precious and events pressing on that fatal morning, when the delegates were required to select a candidate for the second office, to which hardly a thought had been given during the intensely excited canvass of the preceding three days. But had there been grounds for anticipating an acceptance from either of the other Statesmen already named, or John Bell, of Tennessee, who was also suggested, but abandoned because (in the absence of a Tennessee delegation) no one could say that he would not decline the honor, Mr. John Tyler and his anti-Bank notions, if he then entertained any, would never have been put in requisition. None of the statesmen suggested before him was known as an adversary, some of them were prominent advocates, of a Bank. But in truth their opinions on this point were not at all canvassed or considered material. Had the selection of an anti-Bank candidate for Vice President been deemed essential, he would hardly have been looked for in a devoted supporter of Mr. Clay for the Presidency.

General Harrison and Mr. Tyler were chosen President and Vice President by an overwhelming majority. General Harrison died, thirty days after his inauguration, and Mr. Tyler succeeded to the Presidency. He thereupon issued an Address to the People, which was plainly and generally understood to indicate his resolution to unite in such measures with regard to the currency, as the new Whig Congress (which General Harrison had called to meet in extra session, at an early day,) should deem advisable. A variety of circumstances concur to evince that such was at that time his intention.

But the tenor of his Message, on the assembling of Congress, gave indications of a change—or rather of a disposition to hold himself in reserve on this subject, and watch the chances which might turn | up in the course of the inevitable struggle. He spoke of the Sub-Treasury and an old-fashioned Bank, as having been alike condemned by the public voice, and indicated the expediency of adopting some third or intermediate plan, which was very vaguely ‘shadowed forth.’ Plain men were puzzled to divine what was meant by this. Obviously, there were just two principles on which the fiscal affairs of the nation could be conducted—the one, that of the Sub-Treasury, making the Government its own banker, exclusively ; the other, that preferred by ninety-nine in every hundred business men, who seek out the best bank within a convenient distance, collect through it, deposit with it, and buy from it. Other modes than these two we do not know ; and it would puzzle the subtlety of an Abstractionist to devise another. To any but an Abstractionist it must appear evident that a bank of a large capital, chartered by the general government, but managed by the leading business men of the several States, with offices in each, and issuing a currency every where equal to specie, would be far safer, more convenient, more useful as a depository and fiscal agent of that government, than could any number or aggregation of State Banks, limited in their capital and sphere of operations, issuing notes which they would not even receive uniformly of each other, nor of the government, and not amenable to the laws and the supervision of the government, but subject to the capricious legislation and policy of their several States. It was not surprising, therefore, that a decided majority of the new Congress, considering themselves instructed and deputed by the people to take efficient action on the subject of the currency, not merely to repeal the Sub-Treasury act, but to provide a practical substitute, believed that they could in no way so readily and thoroughly effect this important end as by chartering, under some form, a new United States Bank.

But it was not because he differed with the mass of the Whigs on this subject, that Mr. Tyler found it expedient to abandon the party which elected him, and take refuge in the open arms of their deadly antagonists. The Bank rupture was not the cause but the consequence of that change—a plainly foregone conclusion. Had he desired to retain the confidence and fellowship of the party to which he owed his election—had he not been tempted by flatterers and time-servers |335| to indulge a longing for that reelection, which the principles and the affections of the Whigs alike sternly forbade—there would have been no trouble with regard to a Bank. He would have called around him the leading Whigs in Congress, frankly stated to them his difficulty and his anxiety to have it obviated, and a few hours would have served to devise some compromise on which all could have united. But the case was far otherwise. Congress passed one Bank | bill, moulded on its own convictions of the wants of the country, and the duty of the government. Mr. Tyler vetoed it. Having now, as was fairly presumed, a distinct statement, in the Veto Message of the President’s ground of objections Congress passed another Bank bill, expressly framed to obviate those objections, and this was in like manner vetoed, although it had been submitted beforehand to Mr. Tyler and amended at his own suggestion,^*|335| so as (it was sup-posed) |336| to ensure his assent. There was a most anxious desire on the part of the Whigs in Congress, to conform to his views and feelings so far as it was possible to ascertain them. It only failed to do this because nothing less than a second veto would forward Mr. Tyler’s design of carrying over a portion of the Whig party to its adversaries, winning the fervent gratitude of those adversaries for his persistent and successful resistance to that great object of their hatred, a National Bank, and thus placing himself at the head of a new combination which would be constrained to support him for re-election^*|336| as, for once, (to use a phrase of the Madisonian,) ‘President in his own right.’

This project was successful in its first stages, as treachery mainly is ; it failed utterly to secure the coveted reward, in its consummation, as treachery always does. Those who at first were loudest in laudation of the ultra Roman virtue and disinterested patriotism of the Executive, were in due time found among the most fluent and the coarsest in their reproaches of the traitorous simpleton who had idly imagined that he could gain the confidence of his adversaries by an infamous betrayal of his supporters. So long as they were only required to give empty compliments in return for substantial service|—so long as they were asked but to cavil and to toast the Whig elevé who was vetoing Whig measures and proscribing those who had aided his elevation, to give their places to those who had opposed it to the utmost—the price of treachery was paid without stint or scruple. But when the time at length came for the substantial requital of his perfidy—when Mr. Tyler made his appeal to his new allies for their voices and their votes in aid of his re-election, a universal shout of derision gave their only answer. Here and there a solitary office-holder or office-seeker, was found to set up a faint and hypocritical cry for ‘justice to John Tyler’ ! How utterly hollow, forced and awkward ! Two Tyler Democrats, engaged in manufacturing public sympathy or party support for the National Calamity, if by any chance they had been brought to look each other full in the face, must have yielded to a more imperative necessity for laughter than ever constrained two Roman augurs.

At last, when the time came for testing the sincerity of words by deeds, even the empty vanity of lip-service was refused, or very grudgingly given. Mr. Tyler’s office-holders and Treasury-fed presses kept up a fussy show of activity and zeal in his cause, which had no other effect than that of proving his utter destitution of the confidence or good will |337| of any part of the American people. History has no parallel for the pungency of this man’s rebuke, for the depth of his humiliation. A President in secure and undisputed possession of the patronage and power of the Government, holding and exercising the power to dismiss at pleasure, some twenty or thirty thousand functionaries distributed through every township of the Union, who had abandoned the party which elevated him, and | thrown himself and all he had into the arms of its deadly antagonist, because the former would not and the latter did^*|337| flatter him with hopes and promises of a reelection, was unable to obtain a single vote, for a nomination even, in the National Convention of that party for whose deceitful smiles he had sacrified [sic] truth, fidelity, character, the hope of honorable renown—in short, all that a good man holds dear, and a bad man cannot affect to |338| despise. He had ‘filed his mind’ to make everything else subservient to this consuming passion for a second term, and his Postmasters, Revenue Officers, Land Officers, and every species of Executive pensioners, had strained or seemed to strain every nerve to secure ‘Justice to John Tyler !’ Many of the States had chosen their delegates by Congress Districts, so as to afford the most liberal opportunity for the play of intrigue and the force of accident. One must have anticipated that amid the fierce, though subdued, struggles of the friends of Van Buren, Calhoun, Cass, Buchanan, at least one Tyler delegate might have been slipped in, by playing off one strong faction against another, and so securing the vote to a man so weak as to be feared by neither, as a sort of compromise or drawn battle. Aaron Burr, in his most obnoxious days, with Mr. Tyler’s position and patronage, would have secured a fair show of strength in a Democratic Nominating Convention. But the convention met ; the satellites of the Executive also held a convention at the same time and place ! They would exert a happy influence by their presence ! They would designate by their prompt unanimity the man best calculated to heal the fierce discord which reigned in the camp of the Democracy. All labor lost ! The real convention quarreled and struggled for days, unhorsed the old party leaders, and considered the claims of many aspirants to the succession, but never gave a thought to those of John Tyler. Many persons were proposed for President, many voted for, but John Tyler was never among them. From first to last, in calm or in storm, in days when all was hopeless anarchy, and in hours of relative harmony, nobody condescended to throw away a vote on John Tyler. And when the nomination was made, though the name of the candidate was a revelation to most of those who finally supported him, and many were at first disposed to rebel against a choice so strange and unexpected, none of them contemplated the desperate alternative of supporting John Tyler. Yes : after a brief interval had been allowed for the expression of public sentiment, the unwelcome, but indisputable truth overcame even the stubborn infatuation of this man himself. He found that he had no strength, no popularity, no party, not even a faction. Beyond his own office-holding dependents, nobody | talked of supporting him, and these did not mean it. They were even now speculating on the relative chances of the two real candidates, and taking their positions respectively according to their predictions of the result. They alone labored under the necessity of preserving a show of regard for him, and they alone did it. Through the long agony of the succeeding desperate struggle, every man who possessed any power, moral or intellectual, of influencing the opinions or the conduct of men, was eagerly pressed into the arena—was called out by letters, his views solicited, his sayings repeated, his judgment relied on—but who asked, who thought, of the opinions of Mr. Tyler ? And when the struggle was over, and the election of Polk proclaimed, there were cheers and congratulations for all the leaders and champions of the victorious host—there was an almost universal and profoundly sincere sympathy for the great statesman, who, by calumny and fraud, by concealment and evasion, by falsehood and misrepresentation, had been overborne in the vehement contest. Thousands of determined adversaries, now that the struggle was over, bore a cheerful and hearty testimony to his loftiness of character, unequaled practical ability, and chivalrous magnanimity of soul. But who congratulated, who condoled with, President Tyler ? Who but his valiant trencher-men wished that the fortune of the victor, or the honor of the vanquished, had been his ? Who cared whether he grieved or rejoiced at the issue ?

The closing scene of his miserable public life—the gradual wasting away of the ravenous crowd which so recently besieged the portals of the Executive Mansion—the shameless transfer of their sycophancy to the prospective dispenser of Treasury manna—the solitude (save when entertainment was provided) of those dreary hours of waning, vanishing greatness—why should we attempt to portray ? Personally, Mr. Tyler has passed into a fitting obscurity, which his friends must hope may be disturbed by no future accident. Be reflection and penitence the companions of his future years.

The moral of this strange, instructive history is one which cannot be too early or too deeply impressed on the understandings and hearts of our aspiring, eager youth. From the grave of Mr. Tyler’s reputation there rises a warning |339| voice, which says to every attentive soul, “Be True !” Falsehood, unfaithfulness, dissimulation, treachery—these may seem to prosper for the moment, but the eternal laws of the Universe are against them and must prevail. A brief hour of hollow and tottering triumph is all that the most brilliant and perfect success in ill-doing can hope for.

Had Mr. Tyler been a true man, he could not have overruled and defeated the action of Congress on nearly every important measure, except on the most imperative and powerful convictions of duty. He must have realized that the representatives of the People, (not by accident, but by deliberate selection,) elected either simultaneously or subsequently to the choice of President and Vice President, were far more likely to understand the wants and requirements of the country than he alone could be. He must have felt that the unprecedented manner of his unexpected elevation to the Presidency, instead of the man designated for that post by the People, and who stood publicly pledged^*|339| to unite in perfecting such measures, with regard to the currency, as the wisdom of Congress should devise, furnished a strong additional reason for his forbearing the exercise of the extreme power of the Veto. He must have been tortured by the thought that the act which he meditated was certain to send a pang of disappointment and chagrin to nearly every heart that had beat with joy at the tidings of his election, and be hailed with shouts of exultation and delight by every relentless adversary of that cause which had so honored him, and to which he had professed devotion. He must have known that wherever his Vetoes should reach a rude opening in the wilderness, a saw-mill, or a shingle shanty, the ready instinct of every Whig, however unversed in public affairs or the verbal plausibilities whereby infidelity to lofty trusts may be varnished, would proclaim him a designing traitor. Must not an upright man have shrunk from the confusion of his friends, and the exultation of his adversaries, thus foreshadowed, as more to be dreaded than death ? Must he not have sought, if need were, in the resignation of his accidental position an escape from an alternative so full of horror ?

But admit that the Veto of the first Bank bill was impelled by Mr. Tyler’s cherished convictions—admit that he knew | not what he did, when, in the terror excited by the first appalling burst of popular indignation, he urged the preparation and dictated the provisions of a Bank bill which he would assent to—(and this is to stretch charity beyond the bounds of possibility)—admit that the second Bank Veto may in some way be justified—who can attempt to justify his Veto of that most important and patiently elaborated measure, the first Tariff bill of 1842, because it provided for the continuance of the Land distribution to the States ? That Land distribution had formed one of the great practical tests of party affinity for the preceding ten years. The Distribution was originated, and ably, untiringly advocated by Mr. Clay, whom Mr. Tyler had professed so zealously to support in 1839 ; it had been advocated by Mr. Tyler himself, in a Report to the Virginia Legislature ; in his letter (1840) to Mr. Robinson, jun., of Pittsburg, Pa., and at other times. The Whig party and he were alike committed to that measure ; and his letter to Mr. Robinson, rebutting a charge preferred against him of Anti-Tariffism, plainly set forth the entire Whig doctrine on the subject, viz : sufficient Revenue to be raised by means of a Tariff exclusively, and the Land proceeds to be fairly and permanently divided among the States of the Union. And yet this same John Tyler vetoed the great beneficent measure of the Whig Congress, solely on the ground of its providing for this distribution ! and Congress was compelled to surrender it, or leave the Government without the means of subsistence. This was the second time that this benign measure of harmony and peace with regard to the Public Lands has been crushed beneath the weight of a Presidential Veto, purely because its author was Henry Clay.

But let us imagine that some mind can be found so peculiarly constructed as to find no difficulty in reconciling with integrity and good faith the whole series of Mr. Tyler’s Vetoes—to discover some principle on which he may be justified in accepting a nomination as a Whig, and yet using the power thence resulting to thwart and defeat the Whigs on every important measure on which they had appealed to the country—how shall he, how can he, justify Mr. Tyler’s sweeping removal from office of Whigs to make room for their inveterate opponents ? The |340| Whigs had been rigidly excluded from office during the twelve preceding years ; they had labored faithfully with and for Mr. Tyler in the great contest of 1840 ; they had been appointed to office in part by General Harrison, the remainder by himself. But Mr. Tyler sees fit to differ from the Whig majority of Congress on a most vital administrative measure—crimination and alienation ensue—and he proceeds to remove from office nearly all those who had supported, and put in their places men who had vehemently opposed him, some of whom were the very men he had previously supplanted. Was not here a palpable confession on his part, not merely of treachery, but of conscious treachery !

The character of Mr. Tyler may be read by every one in his actions ; but the following summary, by one of the most able and eloquent political writers of the day, is so pointedly, so tersely, and withal so justly written, we present it as the most fit conclusion of all we could wish to say. We quote from the “Defence of the Whigs, by a Member of the twenty-seventh Congress.”

“His few partisans in the nation are clamorous in demanding justice to John Tyler. Justice, assuredly, he will obtain from the pen of History.

“It will represent him as a President accidentally brought into power, who, while the sudden honors of his station were yet new, manifested a heart full of gratitude to his friends and replete with good resolutions to serve the great public interests which had combined to place him where he was. It will describe him as vainglorious, weak and accessible to any extravagance of flattery ; of a jealousy quickly provoked by the ascendency of superior minds, and nervously sensitive against the suspicion of being under their influence. That, from the fear of such an imputation, he had thrown himself into evil associations, and surrounded himself with private and irresponsible counsellors, who, neither by station nor capacity, were entitled to give him advice, and who fatally drove him into an open rupture with those whom it should have been his pride to call his friends.

“Variable and infirm of purpose, he will be exhibited as ever halting between opposite opinions. Anxious to impress the world with a reputation for inflexibility, he will be shown to be, in fact, without a judgment of his own, and resolute | only in avoiding that obvious road which, with least embarrassment to himself and least difficulty in the selection, it was his plainest duty to pursue. It will be truly said of him, that it cost him more trouble to find the wrong way, than ordinarily perplexes other men to discern the right. That, in seeking excuses to differ from his friends and gratify his enemies, he was perpetually shifting from one awkward and difficult device to another, without the least attention even to the appearance of consistency, until he succeeded, at length, in alienating from his society every man whose support he should have desired ; at the same time imbittering the separation with an unhappy distrust of his fidelity to those principles to which he was bound by plighted honor. That, while he was ever changing his ground, conceding, retracting, affirming, denying, his concessions were made without sincerity, his retractions without excuse, and his conduct in all distinguished for its want of dignity. That, with a fair, though moderate reputation for capacity, before he came to the Presidency, he lost this in the first few months of his service ; disappointed the hopes of his friends ; raised his enemies from the despondency of recent defeat into the highest tone of exultation, and diffused through all ranks of the community an opinion of his want of fitness for the high station to which he had been called. That, emphatically the accident of an accident, without popularity, without a mind to conceive or a heart to execute great undertakings, he had chosen a position of intense responsibility and universal observation, and committed himself to a hazard which even the wisest and boldest might contemplate with apprehension.”

“We may say of this President what Milton has said of another unhappy ruler, whose melancholy fate furnishes the most awful example on record of the danger in a Chief Magistrate violating his promises to the people,—“that for the most part, he followed the worser counsels, and, almost always, of the worser men.”

Enough. This is a melancholy chapter of history ; but it teaches one great lesson, which had better be learned thus early in our national existence—never again to set up for exalted political station any other than thoroughly upright men, whose integrity has stood the test of time and temptation.