THE basis of republicanism is to know how to submit to defeat, to acknowledge the judgment of the majority, and to bow to the popular will, as expressed in the ballot boxes. This necessary element of stability in popular governments, seems to be wanting in almost all countries of monarchial education. Among our French friends, in particular, there are those who claim for the minority the "sacred right of insurrection," and at home, our Federal opponents have more than once evinced monarchial promptings, by threatening the exercise of similar "rights!" They are vehemently opposed to fighting national enemies, but marvellously bloodthirsty in respect of successful political opponents, when their tender feelings have been lacerated by defeat; a laceration by the way that has full oft been renewed, and which will scarcely be wholly healed before it is fatally repeated in 1852. The democratic party have now to submit, if not to the voice of the majority of voters, at least to the judgment of the ballot-box, which pronounces not a whig Victory, but simply a democratic defeat. The party which vainly strove to aid Mexico in its efforts to defeat our armies, has, combined with traitorous auxiliaries, succeeded in defeating the American people. The men who, while our armies were striving in an enemy's country, expressed, through Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, as spokesman in Congress, their hope, that the Mexicans would welcome our citizen troops with "bloody hands and hospitable graves," have succeeded in making President one who escaped the fate their patriotic wishes assigned him, and already they are striving with each other for the patronage they hope to control! We trust they will be as mistaken in the official hospitalities they hope from him as they were in those military ones they hoped for him. We have said the election has proved to be a democratic defeat, but not a whig triumph. There were, on the part of the Federalists, no general issues presented; all the old issues, which on former occasions they have presented for popular judgment, have been so often and so promptly condemned, and the candidates representing them so perseveringly rejected, that they were considered hopeless by the ultra partizans, and as finally settled by the people at large. The views of the party, in this respect, have been thus recently expressed by one of its leading organs: "The great basis of our success is a desire on the part of the people to repudiate the ultraism which has alike disgraced both parties; and therefore it is, that we witness the spectacle of the great body of the Whigs repudiating and thrusting aside their long cherished leaders, and demanding the nomination by the party of a man who was free from all the trammels of party." Power and place were the objects and not the support of those principles, the avowal of which, experience has often shown, would have roused the people in opposition, and ensured defeat. Inasmuch as the whig party nominated a successful soldier, fresh from operations that have, as a whole, conferred military reputation upon the United States among nations, and who, to this moment, is known to cherish democratic sympathies, there was no opposition excited among the people at large. These consider old party questions as effectually settled; the free trade principle proximately established; banks forever condemned; the constitutional currency definitively recognized in national operations; the internal improvement corruption schemes permanently at rest; the proceeds of the lands pledged by law to national creditors for twenty years; in short, the defences of the constitution strengthened at every point by the recognition of the strict states' right rule of construction. These principles being all active, and the prosperity of the country unexampled among modern nations under their operation, the whig party avowedly withdrawing all opposition on matters of principle, and giving in their adhesion to the candidate of an independent party, and one who expressly and repeatedly warned his Whig supporters, that he was not the representative of their old principles, and which are now finally settled in the negative-there was no element of popular excitement no serious principle in the way of many who wished to honor General Taylor. The American people, in the exercise of their ge nerous nature, had therefore no objection to indulge Gen. Taylor, as the representative of their pet army, in the occupancy of the White House, more particularly that he had repeatedly disavowed any conuection with their old Federal opponents, and they have suffered him to be made President by a minority of votes. Those who did not choose to vote directly for him, did so individually, by throwing away their votes on free soil, which has thus met with more encouragement than it otherwise would have done; but is, nevertheless, of far less importance than party leaders supposed. The result in figures, shows that Mr. Van Buren, backed by the whole free-soil chimera, could not obtain a single electoral vote, or scarcely influence the direction of one. From the returns it appears that General Cass had a larger number of electoral votes than ever a defeated candidate had before, and that while General Taylor has obtained a smaller majority of electoral votes than ever a candidate elected by the people had before, he is largely in the majority in the popular vote. The electoral votes for four successive terms have been cast as follows: Harrison. Van Buren. Harrison. Van Buren. Clay. Polk. Taylor. Cass. Number of Votes.. 73.... 170......234.... 60.... 105....170....163.... 127 Proportion per ct..24.88.....67.82.....79.60. 20.40....37.06...62.90...56.20..43.79 At the election of 1836, the whig vote was divided between Mangum, White, Webster, and Harrison, Mr Van Buren getting but 57.82 per cent. of the whole number. In 1840, he got 20.40 per cent.; and in 1848, of the 60 votes obtained by him in 1840, 48 were of slave states. In losing their confidence he has lost all-the free states reject him. In the returns of fourteen states, General Taylor has 850,870 votes, General Cass 715,134, and free-soil 245,628, making 109,892 votes against the former. In the four New-England states which voted for General Taylor, the popular vote stands as follows:: Thus showing a majority against General Taylor, of 13,044 votes in four states, which gave a majority of 11,157 for Clay in 1844; the free-soil vote was drawn from both parties. In the four middle states the vote has been as follows: New-York...232.282 1844. Whigs. Democrats. Free-soil. Votes. 1848 11,263 368,752 Whigs. Democrats. Free-soil. Votes. 218.551 114.592 123,519 456,652 New-Jersey.. 38,818 40.009 36,880 926 77,815 Pennsylvania, 161.203 167,535 3.138 331,876 185,513 171,176 Ohio........155,113 149,061 8,050 312,224 138,896 154,862 Total.....587,106 591,676 27,000 1,205,795 682,469 479,310 35,456 328,714 171,164 1,231,933 There has, in these states, been but an increase in the whole number cast, of 28,360 votes. There was, consequently, over 100,000 persons who did not vote; of those who did, a portion of the whigs out of New-York, and of democrats in New-York, adopted the free-soil ticket, from mere indifference to the general result, there being no great question at issue. In the state of New-York, a considerable number, although a large minority, of democrats, have chosen to follow the fortunes of Mr. Van Buren, and the result shows that he has led them into whig ranks, among the old federalists, who refused to vote for General Taylor because he was not strictly pledged to whig principles. The vote has been small, there being but little at issue, and the usual activity which attends strict party organization was wanting, because of the absence of organization. That is to say, while the Van Buren faction and the whig party were both well and efficiently organized, the former to distract the democratic ranks, and the latter for the support of their nominee, the democratic party proper in the state of New-York were scarcely organized at all. Many of the office incumbents depending upon the no-party pledges of General Taylor, took no part in the strife, hence the vote of New-York was not brought out. The whig party depended upon the efforts of the Van Buran faction, to give New-York to Taylor, and while Ohio was abandoned to Cass early in the campaign, it became evident that Pennsylvania was to be the great battle field; and that it was so, the resulting figures indicate. It is almost the only state in which the vote of the people has been brought out, and the extraordinary increase in the whig vote shows the success which crowned the concentration of whig men and money on that ground. The democratic vote is larger in that state for Cass, by 5,126, than for Mr. Polk, when he had a majority of 6,332, and yet General Cass has lost it by 13,432. Of this increase, 10,289 took place in the two counties of Philadelphia and Schuylkill, which were peculiarly the theatre of operations for men and money sent from Boston, Albany, and New-York; Pennsylvania was by these means carried for Taylor, because the disorganization of New-York permitted the great monied New-England interests to concentrate their means in the "key-stone" state As far as national issues are concerned, nothing has been attained by the result of the election. Locally, particularly in New-York, a number of worthy democrats have been sacrificed to gratify the malice of Mr. Van Buren, and their places are filled by ultra whigs, eager to undo all that the democratic party has so long sought to build up. The national democratic party have now to reorganise. The Van Buren shell has exploded, and many an eminent democrat has gone down in the concussion through too close proximity to the incendiary, while the country has sustained a loss in the displacing of some of them through the whig ascendency which resulted. Many of these men yielded with great reluctance to the dictation of the clique, and did so finally only through a mistaken notion of party obligations. The Kinderhook wire pullers most rigorously demanded the pound of flesh, and we fancy there are none now who doubt that in the wanton sacrifice of many an able democrat the obligations have been fully cancelled. With no further power for good, that clique has in the wide spread ruin it has wrought exhausted its power for evil. The instrument of schism has been the chimera of the Wilmot Proviso, and that will now finally be settled either at the present session, or deferred for the action of General Taylor. The vote of the 14 southern states, excluding Delaware, has been 7 states for each candidate, making 63 electoral votes for Taylor and 55 for Cass. Louisiana, for the second time in her existence, voting for a whig nominee, and one, whose most zealous northern supporters have recently held language hostile to the rights claimed by the south. Inasmuch as that the south has rightly estimated the utter hollowness of this proviso trick, it is highly probable that its settlement will be postponed until General Taylor shall have an opportunity of settling it, and his northern supporters are confident he will do so affirmatively. The return to the democratic ranks of those who followed these Proviso leaders will then be a matter of course. But the people have learned a lesson, and none of those leaders can ever again be trusted. They have loaned themselves to the whig party for the purpose of ousting democrats from office, and they must find their reward from whig honor. The people of the United States, who constitute the national democratic party, cannot consent to have their dearest interests trifled with, in order to please the spleen, or gratify the malice of disaffected leaders. There are certain great principles of government that spring from the individuality of the governed, based upon inherent rights and equality before the law. These are not to be jeoperized, and the general interests hazarded at the caprice of would-be leaders and plunder-seeking politicians. Those who think lightly of the national welfare as compared with individual aggrandizement, are to be marked as unworthy of popular confidence, and that party which shall have the temerity to countenance them must look only for continued defeat, |