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|211| THE LATE ACTING PRESIDENT.

We must be indulged in the harmless anachronism which thus anticipates, by a few days, the period when this agreeable form of expression may be employed, with a more strict accuracy than at the moment at which it is now written. For even though the hour has not yet quite arrived, which is to be brightened by the reflection that Tylerism has ceased to exist, in any other than the past tense, yet, by the time this page shall reach the eyes of most of its readers, they will have ceased to blush for the government of their country.

“It will take the country a long time before the morals of our politics can recover from the bad influence which has been exerted over them by the regime of Tylerism”—was the recent remark of a very eminent statesman, occupying a position entirely aloof from it and disinterested in regard to it ; and who neither in his own person nor that of any friend had been injured or assailed by it, but who had rather been, on the contrary, an object of its good-will and flattering attentions. And the remark was true—so true that we scarcely know when and how to expect the curative influence or recuperative power which shall wholly undo the mischief, wholly atone for the disgrace, so deeply and broadly wrought by the events of the last four years.

Of late, indeed, toward the conclusion of Mr. Tyler’s term, certain events have concurred to produce the effect of | raising a little faint show of factitious popularity—not his own but another’s—which attaches not to his general administration, but partly to his office-dispensing patronage, and partly to a particular measure—and which prevents the full manifestation of that common contempt, which both Whig and Democratic parties vie with each other in entertaining, for that nondescript tertium quid which he and an insignificant band of mercenary adherents have constituted, as a hybrid novelty unimagined before in our political experience. The strong arm of the great Statesman of the South so far upholds him, as to let him down with a decent show of dignity, in his descent from the high place to which accident alone ever raised him ; and the blaze of a “Lone Star” streaming up over our south-western horizon, alone sheds a certain degree of feebly reflected light on his retiring person, to redeem it from the entire darkness in which it would otherwise have gone down.

Men rarely love a treason so well, as to forget to despise the traitor. Nor indeed is it by any means clear, that in his defection from the Whigs, who had placed him in the position which gave him his power to harm, Mr. Tyler is entitled even to the usual good treatment which the policy of war accords to deserters. To desert voluntarily is one thing ; to be fairly scourged out of the ranks and out of camp, and then driven over to the enemy as the only place of |212| refuge, is another, and a very different thing. And when the person thus expelled was himself already a deserter in the enemy’s camp, from the side to which he is thus again ignominiously driven back—when his prolonged continuance there up to the time of that expulsion, has involved in itself the grossest treachery to the side from whom he again supplicates a refuge—it cannot be pretended that any very strong case is made out for a very cordial welcome. This is no overcharged picture for Mr. Tyler’s position.

In the year 1840, what Whig out-Whigged the renegade “Virginia Republican ?” Nay, not only was he a Whig of the intensest sort, but he was peculiarly, and par excellence, a Henry Clay Whig. To be a Harrison Whig, or a Scott Whig, at that time, meant comparatively little or nothing ; to be a Clay Whig was full of the deepest and strongest meaning. There was no non-committalism about the bold Kentuckian. His name, his name alone, constituted as distinct an announcement of a system of political doctrine—and political doctrine of the worst sort—as could have been conveyed in any form of creed or catechism. And in the Convention of 1840, Mr. Tyler was so furiously a friend to the selection of Mr. Clay, to be the Presidential candidate and national representative of the Whig Party, that, as has been subsequently proved, it was to the bitterness of his lamentations for Clay’s failure of nomination that he partly owed his own selection for the Vice-Presidency.

We should not have made this fact alone, “per se,” the foundation of the charge against Mr. Tyler of having been a “renegade Virginia Republican,” if he had not, by the palpable corruption of his subsequent course, reflected back upon his position at that time the clearest of lights by which to read his character and conduct. In his zealous Clayism of that day, there was no honesty of conversion, from what he had of old professed. He was sinning against great light, and he knew it. He has subsequently, when ambitious interest prompted a different course, thrown himself back again, with an ardor of Republicanism re-invigorated by its long intermission of repose, upon the old principles, and the old party, which he was then betraying. With no disposition to withhold from Mr. Tyler a | charitable judgment even, nevertheless the undisguised and unblushing excess of the political corruption which has rioted through his administration—now, happily, exhaling its very last breath—has been such as to compel justice, in the interpretation of former equivocal conduct, to accept in all cases the worst construction as the more probable truth.

The history of Mr. Tyler’s administration may be briefly summed up. Becoming Acting President by accident, his polar star was a second term. With this view he first, in conjunction with Webster, aimed at an amalgamation of parties, until it became evident that neither Whigs nor Democrats would have anything to do with such a scheme. The former fairly scourged him forth from any place among them ; while the latter as sternly and contemptuously denied him admittance even within the outermost verge of their gates. Then, and not till then, did Mr. Tyler adopt, as the next tack of his policy, the effort to force or buy his way into the Democratic party, by patronage and Texas,—discarding Webster, and all things Websterian, excepting faithlessness and recklessness ; and hoping to throw us into such confusion as to create at least a probability, if not necessity, of rallying upon him for reëlection, as the only means of averting the worse evil of the election of Clay. Hence his convention at the same place and day with that of the Democratic party. To this hope he clung long and desperately, till the ridicule of his position became intolerable, even to the proverbial fatuity of himself and his family ; and then, months after the nomination of Mr. Polk, he at last withdraws, only after an absurdly transparent attempt to make, by implied understanding with some of our party, the best terms of capitulation in his power for his office-holders. This is the naked outline of Mr. Tyler’s administration.

Does any reader doubt its truth ? Let it be remembered—the almost suppliant tenacity with which Mr. Tyler during his first year clung to the Whig party. At that time, be it borne in mind, the Whigs were fresh from the late contest, which had placed them in the attitude of an overwhelming ascendency ; while the Democrats were apparently a broken-down party, not only comparatively feeble in force, but containing within themselves many elements of |213| confusion and disorganization. In concert with Mr. Webster, the bitterest enemy Mr. Clay has ever had, Mr. Tyler’s game then was, clearly, to shake off Clay, retain the great bulk of the masses whose rush had borne Harrison and himself into power, trusting afterwards gradually so far to disintegrate the Republican party, as to bring in at least a considerable proportion of them around his administration. Hence, although he vetoed Mr. Clay’s Bank Bill, he offered at the same time a much worse one, and actually clung to the profession and name of a Whig, pleading with them imploringly in one of his Messages on the ground of the number of other Whig bills he had signed, until all hope of success vanished, and Clay’s controlling ascendency in the party succeeded in flinging him forcibly and scornfully off into a portion in which it became acknowledged treason for any Whig to maintain any sort of party communion with him.

Let it be remembered—the manner in which he then proceeded to address himself to his next aim, that of courting the Democratic party. Then was witnessed a spectacle of the corrupt abuse of the patronage power of the Executive, unprecedented, unimagined before. One of Mr. Tyler’s first acts after his entrance into power had been to promulgate a special declaration against the interference of the Federal office-holders in politics. On former occasions, also, Mr. Tyler had in a peculiar manner identified himself with this principle. And yet, as soon as he began the working of this policy, that of worming his way into a position in the Democratic party by means of his offices, systematically and universally throughout the country, they were held up as the bribes for adhesion to him and his interest, and activity in his cause. Every man then in the Democratic party occupying any sort of position capable of being represented as one of influence, had office at his disposal for the mere acceptance of it. Democratic Representatives in Congress had almost unlimited command over the Federal patronage of their districts. Anything to prove himself a Democrat—to get admission as such—recognition as such. In all directions were to be seen Whigs removed from office who had scarcely had time to get adjusted in the seats to which they had been appointed either | by General Harrison or by Mr. Tyler himself—Whigs of unimpeached personal worth and capability—for no other even pretended reason than to confer their offices on Democrats. It was a positive public scandal—undisguised, undissembled. We need not dwell on details—a single prominent fact will suffice to illustrate it. The whole system adopted is typified in Mr. Tyler’s Baltimore Convention, of which body nearly all were already his office holders when they went there, while all the rest, with scarcely an exception, have been made so since !

The direct application of the vast machinery of the Federal patronage to the object of buying a deserter’s way into some kind of welcome or reception by a party on which he seeks to fasten himself, presented a novelty in our politics. It certainly wrought a vast amount of mischief. It scattered broadcast through the land, seeds of demoralization, which could scarcely fail, almost everywhere, to find at least a little soil adapted to their too-ready germination. Everywhere a certain number of persons were to be found, urged perhaps by their necessities, or little disposed to be scrupulous in such matters, whom a little judicious dangling of these baits before their eyes could scarcely fail to attract, with an eagerness little disposed to quarrel with the hand from which they were to drop. Unprincipled men were also at many places to be found, who had little difficulty in palming themselves off upon the facile and foolish confidence of Mr. Tyler and his family as their special friends, and as persons of astonishing zeal, activity, and local importance, in whose hands the local management of their interests might safely be reposed. In general able to get only the lowest and worst to fraternize with them in their loud-mouthed partizanship of Mr. Tyler, this class of persons, at many points,, and especially in the cities, succeeded in getting together miserable little knots of persons, rarely more than sufficient to fill the bar-room of some mean haunt which constituted their head-quarters, and these, in connection with the higher incumbents of the lucrative offices, constituted the “party” worthy of their creation and creator, the Tyler Party. With the aid of a few newspapers, supported by the public patronage and by a heavy system of |214| assessed taxation upon the holders of office, these little pot-house knots of “the friends of John Tyler,” were constantly astonishing the country with “mass meetings,” and “great popular demonstrations,” of which it is needless to say that they rarely in numbers much exceeded that of the officers reported to have presided over them. To what extent this system of humbug the most impudent, succeeded in imposing upon Mr. Tyler, so as to make him actually believe in the existence and growth of a great popular sentiment in his behalf, we have no means of knowing. It is, at any rate, very certain, that even if deceived in regard to the imaginary popular sentiment in his favor, manufactured by these persons, he could not have been ignorant of the great fact which constitutes alike the chief characteristic and the worst evil and disgrace of his administration, that it was mainly, if not wholly, by the active plying of the power of his patronage, that the organization of his friends as a “party” was constituted, and sustained to the point of real or fictitious zeal. And this is the leading feature of his term, the employment of office and every manner of patronage to create a party, and keep it up to the due point of stimulus. We fear that a deeper mischief has been thus wrought to the political morality of the country, than would have attended the signing of fifty charters of banks or banking exchequers.

These people have in general been exceedingly clamorous in behalf of “Polk and Dallas,” since Mr. Tyler’s withdrawal—an event which did not take place till nearly three months after the nomination of the Democratic candidate. We believe they even so far surpass themselves in all those attributes which are the opposites of modesty and veracity, as to claim a large share, if not the whole, of the glory of the Democratic victory. In truth we have from the commencement felt satisfied | that they did more harm than good. Their numbers were utterly insignificant. In point of moral force, they added only a weakness and a weight hard and heavy to be borne. It was felt that they were introducing into the Democratic party, and into a position of self-assumed clamorous prominence, frothing on the surface, a class of persons felt generally to be equally unworthy of personal respect or of political confidence. While it cannot but be a matter of regret, that the country has lost the moral benefit of witnessing that just retribution of rebuke which awaited this weakest and worst of our Presidents, in the utterly insignificant number of popular votes it had the slightest chance of obtaining.

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We by no means design to include the whole body of Mr. Tyler’s office-holders within the application of the above remarks. A considerable number of gentlemen of the highest political and personal merit, are indeed to be found among them—either selected through the agency of friends,—or by happy chance—or by way of good leaven to leaven the lump, as respectable endorsers to the bankrupt worthlessness of so many of the rest. Still less, of course, will any portion of them be received as applicable to Mr. Tyler’s Cabinet—the members of which have had little—most of them nothing—to do with the meaner matters of party-making management. Mr. Calhoun’s position in it, in particular, is known to all to have been one far aloof from and above anything and everything of this kind. He accepted the State department at the call of the country for a specific object of the highest public importance, with personal reluctance, entire independence of control, and full understanding of his purpose of retiring as soon as he should have completed the Texas and Oregon negotiations.