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cracy nor Christianity will justify the means or the ends it proposes

As to the former, unless we have grossly mistaken the fundamental principles of a true State, and a trae Church, the very idea of a secret organization is at war with both-at war with the grand humanitary aims, their open, manly, frank, and comprehensive character.) Democracy is a theory of society, which rests the liberty of all men upon a footing of perfect equality, and bounds its sympathies only by the good of the whole people. It contemplates nothing less than the Commonwealth, or, as the word truly signifies, the common weal. It can entertain, therefore, no very friendly feeling for any scheme of action which falls short of that exalted and impartial scope. Universal in its nature, it has no occasion for concealments or stratagems, Its methods are open and above-board, because its objects are not private nor exclusive, but public. What has it to fear from the broadest daylight-the intenses: scrutiny of the sun-or even the purer search of God's own steadfast eye? But scorning whatever is sinister, everything indeed which approaches the enigmatical, the obscure, or the indirect, how can it tolerate the dark works of an agency unknown to it-an agency which skulks like owls and bats at the first glimmer of the morning, and which, like the pestilence, walketh in darkness? Democracy says to its children, "I am open, honest, and free! In the old world, beneath the sensitive and grinding fendalisms of Church and State, there may be reason for those who meditate good purposes to plot in secret and mature their benevolent plans under the wings of silence, but with me there can be no such need. Let your thought be known, and who is there to harm you? Open your hearts, that their good wishes may profit all! Why reserve anything unless it be evil? why muffle and hide your tracks, if you go about good? Are there wolves and beasts of prey to eat you up the moment you are exposed?"

In the same way, the church, in the true idea of it, can have no sympathy with any object less broad than the good of all men, nor with methods less open than its own universal charities. An awful mistake has been committed in considering the church as having an interest or policy apart from the interest a policy of the human race, in converting it into an ecclesiasticism, for the inculcation of creeds, and the separation

of men one from another on grounds of mere belief, instead of regarding it as a universal spiritual economy, identical with all that is truthful and loving in the hearts and minds of men. Of course, all they who take the narrow view of it, will find little in its idea or functions to rebuke the spirit of exclusivism or secresy in any of its manifestations; but they who take the larger view, who see in all the designs of Christ a truth and goodness commensurate with the universe, will shrink instinctively from every scheme which proposes to work underground like a mole, or to bottle up the overflowing graces of the Creator within the limits of its own sect or party. Christianity must work for all men, in the openest and directest way, or cease to work at all. We have abundant evidence of this in its earlier history, in its disastrous deflections into gross ecclesiastical impositions, and need not dwell upon that head. In this country, at least, it must exhibit a spirit as broad, generous, and as frank as the spirit of our political organization, or fall disgracefully behind. "Its doors must be," as an able writer has said, "as wide as the doors of our political house, or we shall present the disreputable picture of a body larger than its soul, or of a Church less celestial than its corresponding State." If Democracy, then, disowns every sinister and partial organization, every scheme less Catholic and transparent than itself, how much more must a genuine Christianity?

As a doctrine, in the second place, what does Know-Nothingism propose? The political disability of vast numbers of men, on the ground of race or religion. Can anything be more intolerant, narrow, or bigoted? Did the old priestly or warlike tyrannies which man has been writhing under these centuries back, lend themselves to a meaner dominion than this would assert for our young Republic? The fetid and defunct dynasties which have become a loathsome remembrance to men, which were terrible fungi in their day, and a reproach for ever, grew from roots like these it is now proposed to plant in our soil. We that have made it our song ever since we were born, that here humanity had at last found a home, that here all the antiquated distinctions of race, nationality, sect, and caste, were merged in the single distinction of manhood-that here man was to be finally recognized as man, and not as Jew or

Gentile, as Christian or Mohammedan,as Protestant or Catholic-we, who have made the world ring with selfglorifications of the asylum of the oppressed of all creeds and nations-of the city of refuge to all the weary exiles of freedom, "whom earth's proud lords in rage or fear, drive from their wasted homes," we, are now asked to erect political barriers, to deal out political excommunication as narrow, as mean, as selfish, and as unwarrantable as ever debased the elder governments.

That a preparatory residence and discipline should be required of foreigners, before their incorporation into the State, is reasonable; the extent and nature of such social quarantine may also be conceded to be a question for discussion; but the total exclusion of aliens froin citizenship for the future, is so monstrous a meanness that one is loth to entertain the conception. It is such an utter and unequivocal surrender of nearly every peculiarity of our institutions, that it would not merely lay all the new comers under ban, but denationalize ourselves! The cry is, "America for Americans," and we agree to it heartily, but what is America, and who are Americans? He is not a Jew saith the apostle, who is one outwardly - and America, in the same sense, is not a certain measurable area of territory, nor the American every miserable biped that happens to be born upon it. America, is the cognomen of a nation of men, and not of a collection of arable acres; and Americans are not simply the individual Indians, negroes, and whites, who first saw light between Passamaquoddy and Pensacola, but all who are Americans inwardly-who are built up on the American idea, who live in the true sentiment of democracy, whose political "circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, and whose praise is not of men but of God." These are the true Americans, wherever they chanced to be born-whether Turk, Russian, Milesian, or Choctaw, and are infinitely to be preferred to the unthinking and virulent natives, whose Americanism sinks no deeper than their skins; and had no existence before their flabby little bodies were first swaddled.

Ame

rica to the Americans, surely ;-not to the spurious, skin-deep, apparitional Americans, but to the real men worthy of the name!

We are apt to suppose, in projecting these exclusions, that the persons shut

out are the only persons seriously affected by them, but that is a woeful mistake. He that commits injustice, he that perpetrates meanness, suffers from it as badly as he that is the direct victim. Curses, like young chickens, says the familiar old proverb, always come home to roost. Debar the halfmillion of emigrants who annually reach our shores from the elective franchise, and what would be the effect? Why, the growth, in the very midst of the community, of a vast disfranchised class-of an immense body of political lepers of men having an existence apart from their fellow men, not identified with them, not incorporated with society; and consequently tempted on all sides to conspire against it, to prey upon it, and to keep it in disorder. Coming here ignorant, vicious, unruly aliens would remain ignorant, vicious, and unruly; for they would have few of the strong motives which they now have to become orderly and estimable citizens. They would remain outside of those educational influences, which are the glory as well as salvation of free institutions, the jury, the ballot, the legislative assembly, etc., and which render it so important to us to extend those influences to all who are members of our societies. We have already, in the midst of us, one class of outcasts, in the poor and degraded free blacks, and that, we should think, sufficient to appease anybody's malignity, without striving to raise up another from the Germans, the Irish, or any other nation.

It is scarcely possible, however, to believe that the Know-Nothings contemplate such an extreme error as the entire exclusion of future aliens from political life. It must be a calumny of their enemies, or a product of suspicion aggravated by fear. At any rate, we are certain that the late political tourbillons which have sent such swift consternation and dismay into the hearts of the old political foxes, have not been caused by any affinity for such a project We have too much respect for our fellow-citizens to suppose it; but we ascribe these extraordinary movements to other sources. They are a result of a double reaction-firstly against the excessive cultivation of foreigners by the demagogues; and, secondly, against the miserable folly and corruption of the old political parties.

It cannot be denied that for some years now, both whigs and democrats

have prostrated themselves before the alien-voters, in a servile and disgraceful way. Holding the balance of power, as the latter did, between the two parties, there was no end to the concessions, the fummeries, and the substantial douceurs, too, by which they were courted. Honors and offices were heaped upon them with a profusion, which recalled the debut of some popular actress, and the showers of bouquets which greeted her from her adoring friends. It was better to be an Irishman, or a German, than a native American; a Mac or O', to one's name, was the handle which lifted him to fortune and an unpronounceabla German patronymic was a passport to all kinds of political favor. No ticket was a complete ticket which did not contain a sop, in the shape of a candidate to the Irish interest or the German interest, and the suppleness with which senators and governors bent themselves in that direction, set new lessons in the art of fawning-gave new formulas for the preparation of adroit lies. Is it a wonder, then, that the Americans them selves, shoved so wholly into the shadow, should get a little tired of the game? More especially, when the same influences, which introduced the foreigners into political office, were likewise introducing them into so many private places of emolument and trust? Not at all! But the foreigners were not to blame for it, or, at least, for nothing beyond a little natural presumption occasioned by their good luck. The dastardly and un

principled demagogues, who wheedled them into excesses, are the offenders who should bear the brunt of the punishment. Let all those, too, who hereafter appeal to the citizens under any other name that Americans, come in for a share, and ther we shall have "America for the Ameri cans," in the truest and best sense of the phrase.

In the late irruptions of Know No thingism, which have come over the old parties like an avalanche from the Alps, whelming rider and horse, captain and cattle, in a common ruin, we are dis posed to rejoice. We should do so, with a joy unfeigned, if we were sure that the effects of the bouleversement would be confined to the flatulent old hacks, the queasy and prarient old bawds, who have so long had the control of the old parties. We should be glad to see them and their machinery-their caucuses and primary assemblies, and regular nominations-pitched like rotten wood into the pit; we did laugh indeed, "many a time and oft," during the last fall, as we saw how invisible hands were pricking one after another of their windbags, and allowing them to exhale, amid looks of blank astonishment on the part of those whom their gassy contents had often floated into office; but we fear that the success of the Know Nothings may throw them into the hands of these very men, or if it does not, that their intoxication may carry them to lengths which we shall have to deplore.

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CURSIVE AND DISCURSIVE.

EDITORIAL.

is due to our friends and the public that we narrate to them the late conversation (in our private office) between ourselves and Alick M. Payne.

Payne is young. He is bitten with a scribblo-mania. He is also rural-rural in the extreme; as will be sufficiently evident when we add that he has plunged headlong into the great whirlpool of New Yorkand is yet circulating therein-with a view of accumulating immense riches, on the strength of having sold three articles to the publishers of a Magazine.

We knew him erst, in his native wilds; and now, in the first proud flush of his expectations, while he was debating whether he should accept the editorial chair of a leading periodical (we faintly suspected him of meditating our own ejection from our place), or publish a volume of essays (entitled, What I don't know Anything About), he came to us to chant his little poem in advance.

We eradicated, in the first instance, his editorial expectations. He cad delineated with enthusiasm the infinite ascending series of his triumphs. Able editorials; trenchant criticism; fresh thoughts; opera; arts; literary circles; the best society; he displayed a paradisaic picture, all sunshine and foreground, without a middle tint or a shadow.

The considerations which we laid before our aspiring friend were very simple and very obvious.

"Let us suppose, dear friend," said we, "that you are, in the single respect of ability, competent to fill a chair, such, for instance, as that which we occupy. Suppose that you have the requisite power. Have you the training that you need, to use it? Do you imagine that you comprehend the forces of whose lines of action your own line of action must be compounded? Don't answer. I asked for rhetorical effect; not to get any response from you. And, above all, don't keep smiling in that supreme manner, and manipulating the little ginger-colored fog upon your upper lip. Listen, now, to the words of experience -while we delineate to you the duties of the place we hold-what, in holding such an one, you would be necessitated to do.

For the performance of such duties,

Alick, that quaint introverted contem plation of yours-that self-centered habitude of mind which evolves bouquets of artificial flower-fancies, however life-like, would be useless. That you can construet unheard-of sentences-can juggle with English until you create, out of its hard material, dishes as foreign to its normal state as were the Frenchman's five piquant soups and thirteen varieties of entremets, to the horsetail and the old shoe from which he compiled them,-will never help you. He failed disgracefully in the wild endeavor to make a sirloin of beef out of his subjectmatter. No more could you, from such mental labor as you have most used, deal as a master and leader, with the literature of the nation. What! have you the strength and the wisdom to read MS. scrawled, scribbled, or blotted, at the rate of a thousand articles, and thirty thousand pages a-year; to judge which of them are best suited to the current popular demand, and at the same time to improve the popular mind; to let down easily the nine of every ten who are refused, with sweet and tender declinatures, such as shall soothe the rage of the disappointed great, and the anguish of the disappointed small; to put your heart under a Pharaonic dispensation of hardness; to steel yourself alike against the cries of the needy girl or the starving boy who have poured out their poor souls on paper, that their best thoughts may haply bring them a few dollars to scare away the hunger-fiend, and the imperial frost of scorn, or the imperial lightning of wrath from the eminent man whose calm statement (mentioning what little amount is to be remitted for the article, and in what number it is to stand) is answered, that you don't think his composition suitable to the present occasion of the Magazine?

Beloved friend, the daily avalanche of material would crush you as to quantity, and scare you to death, as to quality and variety. Consider only the fearful fag-end of our contributions. Crazy men's poems, covering a quarter of a ream of (appropriate) foolscap, in light yellow ink and an indistinct style of lettering, as if written by a palsied man, with weak saffron tea; interminable concrete tediousness-whose highly respectable concocters, like Dogberry, have it in their hearts to bestow all of it on us, if

they were as tedious as a king-dribbling over a century, or half century of pages; watery essays, collegially pun-speckled, read before a students' society, or radiating the thick darkness of seventeen-year-old philosophers from before a village lyceum; wonderful sonnets, odes, lyrics, and dithyrambics, with lines duly capitalized at the beginning, separated into groups of from one to seventeen and a fraction, and shadowing forth all conceivable phases of human passion, from the inarticulateness of idiotic drivel and flat ultra-Mosaic meekness, around the ring to the inarticulateness of chaotic maniacal fury; such has been the lowest class of matter offered; and the quality of the remainder has varied through all the grades of excellence, up to the prose and poetry of the leaders of American literature.

I barely allude to the additional duty of "doing the books." Four to ten per diem; strictly miscellaneous in assortment; either with tedium to be read, for a fair and valuable criticism, or dishonestly to be skimmed for a pretentious or useless one. You, who are honest, would consume the midnight gas, and fritter away your golden hours in cursory, exhausting and useless investigations, to tell people who write what they have done well or ill, and people who read what to bay. That is right, Alick; critieism should do that, honestly and bravely, or it should do nothing; but the daring craft must steer between eddies and whirlpools.

You smile-happily rather more feebly than at first; nor do you yet fondle the ginger-colored fog. What? you always did like hard work; and pride yourself, if upon anything, upon that precise quality of grubbing? Yea? Listen further, oh, "wash neophyte "-that is only the exoteric mystery of our craft.

You are competent to judge the judges— to proceed apodictically and ex-cathedrally in estimating the greatest, and in not under estimating the smallest, of our literary men and women? Granted, presumptuous Alick, for this occasion only; and now, receive a second blow.

You know what are the aims of the periodical under our charge-a mind so clear and an ambition so pure and lofty as your own could not entertain lower ones. We will classify them in a trine division, and the product of the analysis may, if you choose, stand as the ideal purpose of American periodical literature. Or, suppose

you were intending to occupy the place of your speaker.

An infinitesimal shadow of consciousness fleeted across the face of the audience. Alick had in dreams pressed our thronean editorial king.

Our aims are three; and conflicting: we would stand the truest type and exponent of American thought; that is, of a national intellect far the most gigantic and active; of a national intellection the strongest and most vivid, the most unbounded, discursive, joyous and free, that has ever stirred upon the earth.

We desire and this aim, as higher and nobler yet, may confront or overbear that other high and noble one-to exist in this free Western land as a power; wielding such influence as we may, on the side of all that is Right and True, irrespectively of individuals or organizations.

Lastly, we desire to please the public taste. This we must do, in order to maintain our existence. But in order to maintain our self-respect, we must do it subject to the dominant exigencies of the former two purposes.

You, therefore, editorially instaurated, oh, steam-engineering Alick! can, we suppose, do the work. And you can proceed, in steam-enginary impassibility, to condemn and refuse all that is too flat or too sharp, notwithstanding the poverty, grief, or fame of the writer; nor shall your cylinder engine-heart be touched by anger or sorrow -scared by the gibbering ghosts, or the remonstrating personalities of the rejected.

"Their necromantic forms in vain Haunt you on the tented plain."

Yea; suppose.

But, having selected the compositions which seem to you the best, can you impartially apply the other tests? Will not article A be too heavy, B too long, C too provoking, D too irreligious, E too vulgar! Not for your own calm and self-centered judgment, passionless Alick—but for "people." People, you know, are such singular people. They won't see; can't see; see through inverting glasses. And if you provoke, or frighten, or stupefy, the "list"

shortens.

Can you, Alick of the fairy fancies, comprehend this wicked, reckless, impetuous, jolly, keen, calculating, sober, benevolent. affectionate, religious American people? Can you administer to such brain-fevered customers a cup which shall cheer but not

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