can citizen should abominate. We fear that his administration will accept the policy urged upon us by Ludwig Kossuth, alias Alexander Smith, the vice-president of the American Bible Society. He is warmly supported by Senator Douglas, the pet candidate of the filibusters, and by that organ of the foreign radicals and revolutionists who have fled hither to save their necks from the halter they so richly merit for their deeds in their own country,-the Democratic Review. We do not suppose the government will send its fleet to Hungary, for Hungary proper, we believe, has no seaport, or that it will declare war either against Austria or Russia; but all that it can do to support the revolutionists of Europe, short of actual armed intervention, we fear it would do, in case of the success of the Democratic party. All appearances indicate that a Democratic administration would favor secretly, if not openly, effective measures to revolutionize Cuba, and detach it from Spain, and very likely kindle another war with Mexico, and annex the greater part of its territory to the Union. It would most likely seek to rival in this respect the Polk administration, and would, without any doubt, find the sentiment of the country sustaining it. "Expansive Democracy" would be in power, and the government would be conducted on the "manifest destiny" principle. We may be mistaken in all this, we shall be most happy to find that we are; but we fear we are not. Under this point of view, a point of view of especial importance to us as Catholics, for the red revolutions and filibuster campaigns are all primarily directed against the church of God, we think the danger would be somewhat less under a Whig than a Democratic administration. We must also remember, and we beg our Catholic friends not to forget, that it was not a Whig, but a leading Democrat, Mr. Polk's secretary of the treasury, who raised the cry of the "Anglo-Saxon Alliance," which if effected, would prove simply an alliance of the Protestant world against the Catholic.

There is no question, if we turn from the foreign to the internal affairs of the Union, that the tendency of the Whigs is rather to centralization, and that of a section of the Democratic party to an exaggerated view of state rights. But this tendency of either can be pushed to a dangerous extreme only by the financial measures of the government and continued abolition or free-soil agitation. The financial policy of the government, we may safely pre

dict, will be substantially the same, let which party will succeed in the election, and therefore calls here for no particular discussion. The abolition or free-soil agitation is a serious affair, and if continued will lead either to a dissolution, or, what is more probable, to a centralization, of the Union. Both parties are indeed pledged against this agitation, but perhaps both are not equally likely to keep the pledge. The abolition or free-soil section of the Whig party have got their candidate for the presidency, and are the controlling section of that party. General Scott personally, no doubt, is opposed to the agitation, and in favor of sustaining the fugitive slave law; but the free-soil section of his party must be the principal recipients of the executive patronage, and have the preponderating influence in his administration. He will be obliged to administer the government very much in accordance with their views, and consequently there is great danger of its being too favorable to free-soil agitation. The Democratic party, though strongly tinctured at the North with abolitionism, is less likely, we think, to break its pledges than the Whig party. General Pierce is well known to be opposed to abolitionism, and in favor of leaving the whole question of slavery to the states in which slavery exists. His doctrine was, when we knew him personally, and we have no reason to suppose that it has changed since, that slavery is a question the disposal of which has never been conceded to the Union, therefore is reserved to the states, and with it we who live in the free states have no more to do than we have with it in Cuba or Constantinople. His doctrine

here is sound, and so is the doctrine of the leading Democrats in all sections of the Union. So far as the question of slavery is concerned, we feel that the Union will be less unsafe in the hands of the Democrats than in the hands of the Whigs. In regard to foreign intervention or democratic propagandism, whether officially or otherwise, we should give the preference, under existing circumstances, to the Whigs; and with regard to the domestic or internal affairs of the Union, to the Democrats.

In regard to the principles and measures of government in general, and which with us find their application in the individual states, the minority of the Whig party are undoubtedly the soundest part of our citizens, at least in this commonwealth of Massachusetts. As it concerns fanatical legislation, of which the Maine liquor law is a specimen,

both parties are implicated, but perhaps the Whig party to the greatest extent. Properly speaking, this sort of legislation is neither Whig nor Democratic, but Puritanic. It is only a revival of old Massachusetts colonial legislation, and part and parcel of that policy which was adopted, and so rigorously enforced in Geneva, by John Calvin. The system aims to effect by legislation what can be effected only by moral suasion and the influence of religion on the heart and conscience. It strikes at the first principles of individual freedom, and establishes a most odious social despotism. It is in perfect accordance with the political principles of the Democratic party, but, as parties are rarely consistent throughout, probably, so far as it is concerned, it makes not much difference which party is in power. In both parties are men who oppose it; in both are men who will support it from conviction, and a still larger number, who, while despising it, will support it because they believe it popular, or fear that it would be unpopular to oppose it.

With regard to law reform and the judiciary the Whigs are generally less unsound and more conservative than the Democrats. In this state the Whig party on these questions takes the right side; the Democrats generally are as wrong as men well can be. These questions are especially important to us as Catholics, for we are in the minority, and our religion is odious to the majority. We could have no safety under the Democratic doctrine of law, and the power of the legislature over vested rights. The security of our interests, our rights of property, our churches, and our buryinggrounds, depends only on the common law and the independence and purity of the judiciary, both of which it is a part of the Democratic policy to sweep away, and which it is as yet a part of the Whig policy to preserve. We must be utterly blind to our own interests as Catholics, as well as to the interests of the commonwealth, if we yield our support to the Democratic party in this state as a state party. As matters now stand, the Whigs, as a state party, seem to us to deserve the preference. Of the party in other states, as a state party, we are not qualified to speak.

As to the questions raised about Protestant test laws, Native Americanisin, &c., we have little to say. Catholics as such have nothing to hope from either Scott or Pierce, and no more to fear from the one than from the other. Neither is a Catholic, and neither is a bigot. Pierce is from a state which retains for certain offices a Protestant test,

which practically amounts to nothing; but he is well known to have exerted himself to abolish it, though without success. As Catholics, we owe no gratitude to those zealous demagogues who, in order to induce Catholics to vote for Scott against him, make him responsible for it. We think just as much of them as we do of those other demagogues who labor to enlist Protestant prejudice against Scott, because one of his daughters, and we know not but two, has received the grace to become Catholic. We regret to see such things brought into our political contests, and we despise the demagogues who introduce them; but, alas! the fools are not all dead yet, and a new brood is hatched every year. Scott has been accused of native Americanism, and on this ground it has been attempted to prejudice our citizens of foreign birth against him, and to secure their votes for his competitor; but we have no reason to believe him unduly American. We are not at all disturbed by the pettish letter he is said to have written some years ago, but which he has sufficiently retracted. This question of native Americanism is one that requires to be treated with great delicacy, and our friends of foreign birth must be careful how they touch it, lest they bring about the very evil they seek to guard against. We, as our readers well know, have not the least conceivable sympathy with political native Americanism; but, nevertheless, we are American, American born and reared, as our ancestors for a hundred and fifty years before We share largely in the American nationality, and we are very much disposed to believe that American interests should dictate and control American politics. Now, there are two classes of foreigners who leave their own country to settle here, towards which we have very different feelings. The peaceful, industrious, and laborious foreigners, like the great mass of the Irish and German emigrants, who come here to seek a home for themselves and their children, and who quietly study to learn and discharge their duties as American citizens, we greet with a hearty welcome, and would admit them at an early moment to all the rights and immunities of native-born citizens. But there is another class of emigrants, demagogues, revolutionists, desperadoes, who, after having failed to revolutionize their own countries, fly hither either to save their necks from the merited halter, or to abuse the liberty granted them by our government and laws, to renew their anti-social and liberticide projects, and to carry away our government and people in a vain and

ns.

mischievous attempt to realize their mad schemes, either here or in the countries they have left behind. These unprincipled and crazy spirits congregate in our cities, form secret societies all through our land, affiliated to like societies all over Europe, gather around our journalists, get the control of newspapers, corrupt the public mind, and through their own countrymen of the other class, naturalized here, attempt to control cur politics and shape the whole policy of the government, foreign and domestic. They uniformly attach themselves to the extreme radical party of the country, and hurry it on in the most dangerous direction. Foreigners of this description have been the curse of this country, from the miserable Callender, the foul-mouthed libeller of the government under the elder Adams, to the Hungarian speech-maker, Kossuth, and the radical writers for the Democratic Review. Now we grant our American spirit burns, and our American blood boils, to be made in our country, on our own native soil, the slaves or the tools of these foreign desperadoes and cutthroats, who are controlled by the greater criminals they have left in the Old World. If General Scott's native Americanism strikes only at these, and is intended merely to reduce this political rabble to silence and insignificance, we share it with him, and instead of looking upon it as an objection, we assure his opponents that we regard it as a recommendation. In promoting such native Americanism, we go with him with all our heart, and so must every loyal American citizen, whether native or foreign born. But if he goes against the other class of our foreign-born population, we go not with him, and very few of the American people will. It is only in case they suffer themselves to be formed into a foreign party, under the lead of these political cutthroats, for foreign purposes, that the American people will ever listen to political native Americanism; then they may do it, and, of course, applaud the guilty party, and punish the innocent. But we have no reason to suppose that General Scott is at all opposed to the former class we have described, and his dry nurse, Seward, is the bosom friend of the latter.

We sum up then. Of the old Federalist and Republican parties, the Federalists were the party most favorable to personal liberty and social order; of the modern Whigs and Democrats, the Whigs are preferable on the question of foreign revolutionism and its accessories, and on the questions of law reform, the common law, and the judiciary;