end of his ambition. He possesses that personal magnetism which conduces to enthusiastic popularity. He has a fine sense for dramatic situations and telling combinations; he speaks well, and has the reputation of indomitable pluck. But his most marked quality is an audacious ingenuity, a fertility of resources, which reminds one of Sam Slick, or still more of the Tyll Eulenspiegel of the German Volksbücher. His record during the present session is an unbroken series of tours de force. He out-Granted Grant on the Public School Question, when the suspicion that he was himself a Catholic was believed to have prompted the President to raise that issue. He out-Mortoned Morton with "the bloody shirt," and roused into real life an amount of slumbering suspicion throughout the North, which will tell heavily at the next election. But here he overshot the mark, and excited the bitter enmity of the Democrats in Congress, especially from the South, and it was certain that no stone would be left unturned that they might give him a Roland for his Oliver. Well, they have done their worst; and after all they have come back shorn from that wool-gathering expedition. Any one of less skill, audacity and force of character would have been badly damaged by his enemies; but as it is, he has managed to put the whole party before the country as united in an attempt to destroy the reputation of a man, against whom they have proved nothing and know nothing.

The charge that Mr. Blaine had secretly acted in the interest of certain railroad magnates, to the abuse of his position as Speaker of the House, and had received certain shares of stock in consideration, seemed to break down at once when those gentlemen gave testimony before the sub-committee of the Judiciary Committee. But no report on the subject was made to Congress, and rumors of other evidence, affecting other dubious transactions, were current. A Mr. Mulligan of Boston appeared on the scene, with sundry letters found in the desk of Mulligan's employer, the late Mr. Wilson of Boston, relating to Mr. Blaine's connection with an Arkansas railroad. These letters Mr. Blaine got out of Mulligan's possession, not by the most courteous means in the world, and refused to let the Judiciary Committee read a line of them. Under the pressure of friendly advice, he read the whole package to the House, and then amid great excitement on all hands, charged the Judiciary Committee with the suppression of a telegram from one of his railway friends in London, fully confirming the exculpatory evidence already given. That this telegram had been

in possession of Mr. Knott, of Kentucky, chairman of that committee, for several days, and had never been laid before the committee, much less communicated to Mr. Blaine as was done in Mr. Sherman's case has an ugly look. But neither does it look well that it was first telegraphed to England from this city, and then sent back to Mr. Knott as if spontaneous.

As to the contents of Mr. Blaine's letters, there has arisen some difference of opinion. They certainly show that he had been trading in railroad stocks, and accepting them on special terms in consideration of his own "usefulness;" but they contain nothing to show that he did not mean to use merely his personal influence to induce others to subscribe for the stock, and the allusions to some who had suffered from such purchases of stock at his instance, and his own anxiety to protect them, confirm this construction. They certainly also relate only to the stock of a railroad which has not been concerned in any act of Congress since the presidency of Fillmore. While not among the number of Mr. Blaine's admirers, we do think that he is entitled to an acquittal on the evidence presented; and we do not envy his persecutors-for such we must call them, in view of the full display of their motives-the position in which he has placed them before the country. We think, however, that their motives are to be sought rather in what had already happened in Congress, than in what they expected to happen in the Republican Convention, although they probably aimed at inflicting upon this especial enemy a humiliation with his own party. We doubt if the whole affair made any difference as to his Presidential chances, either one way or the other.

THE Republican Convention, which met at Cincinnati June 14th, was a much more respectable and satisfactory body than that which renominated Gen. Grant in this city four years ago. It is very evident that the prestige and political influence of the office-holders has declined, under the scrutiny of the era of investigation; and that the President's control of this force has diminished since the Third Term scheme was given up. The whole civil service influence could not secure a decent vote for the favorite candidate of the Administration.

Mr. Blaine kept well ahead of all his competitors till the very last ballot, and the possibility of carrying any one of the prominent

candidates over his head was seen to be nil. His sudden prostration by heat and nervous excitement while attending church on the previous Sunday had seemed for a time to give vigor to his opponents, but his speedy recovery had turned the scale again. The vote of Pennsylvania was counted on by his friends, after a few ballots for Hartranft; and it was well understood that Secretary Cameron could not deliver the goods which the Administration had contracted for -the vote of our State for the candidate detested beyond all others by its people. The State Convention, in pursuit of the usual policy of making sure that the successful candidate should owe his selection to Pennsylvania votes, had instructed the delegation to vote as a unit. Mr. Blaine might have been nominated, had not this rule been broken down by the decision of the President of the Convention, and at the instance of some Blaine men, who were tired of casting fruitless votes for Hartranft, and who secured, after a fierce discussion, the right to vote as they severally pleased. By the sixth ballot, fourteen Pennsylvania votes had gone over to Blaine, and it was seen at once that something must be done to defeat him. A scene of wild confusion followed; delegations withdrew for conference, and when the Convention came to order again it was known that a compromise had been reached. Even now, after the withdrawal of Morton and Bristow by Indiana and Kentucky, and the abandonment of Hartranft and Conkling, another ballot would have been necessary had the majority of the Pennsylvania delegates been able to cast the vote of the delegation as a unit. But Rutherford B. Hayes, Governor of Ohio, the compromise candidate, received twenty-four of her fifty-eight votes, and thus obtained the nomination. The nomination of William A. Wheeler, of New York, for Vice-President, was easy and unanimous.

A compromise would have been reached long before the seventh ballot had not the Bristow men stood out against any surrender of their impossible candidate, whom they regarded as the only man with a claim to the votes of all parties in the Convention.

From the States on which the Republican party can count with certainty in the next election, Mr. Blaine received 167 votes, and Mr. Hayes 144. But when the doubtful States, whose support they need, are added, the majority is turned in favor of Mr. Hayes.

It would be absurd to say that the nominations have created

general or unqualified satisfaction. On the contrary, they have deepened the popular distrust of this method of nomination. It is felt that this plan prevents the selection of a man of national reputation, and necessitates the choice of some one whose "availability" is chiefly the effect of his obscurity. And when we look at some previous nominations, such as that of Pierce, we cannot with confidence rejoice in the exclusion of the better-known candidates.

We think it most probable that had the nomination been effected by the direct vote of the Republican party, Mr. James G. Blaine would have been the successful candidate. He has, more than any other man in the party, the qualities which excite popular enthusiasm ; and while he would not have united all the elements of the Republican party in his support as Mr. Hayes will, he would have drawn a much heavier vote from the great and irresolute mass of citizens who are not active and zealous for either party. That he would have been what "the better self" of the nation is demanding, a President devoted to the reform of abuses and the correction of our methods, we do not see any reason to believe. But neither are we confident that Gov. Hayes will be—if elected anything more than a respectably efficient President, who will leave our governmental traditions and machinery very much as he found them. He is a man of liberal education, great wealth, and great local popularity. He was one of the thousands of excellent and faithful officers to whom we owe the suppression of the rebellion; but he won no special distinction in the army. For three years he was a respectable member of Congress, but kept his mouth shut and exerted no influence upon the legislation of his country. He has been thrice elected to the Governorship of his native State, defeating successively three able Democrats, Thurman, Pendleton and Allen. Whatever promise is contained in those achievements, he gives us, but nothing more; and to those who look beyond the election to the policy of the coming President, the future is a blank page, fringed with the consolatory motto, "we might have done worse."

If the ticket we turned "topside t'other way" it would be vastly stronger. In national reputation, in active conversance with national affairs, the Republican nominee for the post of "heir apparent to the Presidency" is the stronger of the two. He prob

ably owed his nomination to the fact that New York is regarded as a doubtful State; but so far as we can judge, it has been hailed with unreserved satisfaction in all quarters.

WE hope that the more distinguished members of the Masschusetts delegation to Cincinnati will tell us something of their visa et cogitata during their attendance on the sessions of that body. Great things were expected of that delegation; it combined "all the talents" of the Hub. Hosea Bigelow was there-taking notes, let us hope, for a more modern version of the "Speech of Hon. Preserved Doe." And there was his clerical equal, James Freeman Clarke, who horrified the State Republican Convention some years ago by standing up, solitary and alone, to declare that he would not vote for Ben. Butler if the convention were to nominate him for Governor; and who made that admirable addition to our political epigrams: "A statesman thinks of the next generation, a politician of the next election." We fear Mr. Clarke was thinking a good deal of the next election at Cincinnati.

Somehow the Hub did not seem satisfied with her delegation. We hear growls to the effect that they were about the weakest and most powerless lot in the whole body. Of course they voted right, first for Bristow, and then for "anything to beat Blaine." But they did not quite realize all those magnificent prophecies that Emerson indulges in, about the sovereignty of intellect over the thoughts and desires of ordinary people. We do not suppose that the delegation themselves looked for any such results ; they and others like them, who overcame the dislike of strange surroundings, and went out of their beaten paths to discharge a very plain duty, must have done so with the feeling that they were casting bread upon the waters-were uttering a quiet protest against the bad tendencies both of the classes who do manage our political machinery and those who abstain from contact with it. But we are greatly mistaken if they did not feel just a little dizzy amid the workings of a great convention, with whose motive forces and lines of operation they were unfamiliar. And they must have come back with a trifle more of respect for the practical politicians, and a trifle less confidence that "the scholar in politics" will have an easy task in getting control of the political movement. On this, as on many other points, Hon. P. Doe is right.