England has been ruled by various dynasties; the American chair has been chiefly occupied by the Southern House, the Dynasty of Slaveholders: now and then a member of the Northern House has sat on that seat, but commonly it has been a "Northern man with Southern principles," never a man with mind to see the great idea of America, and will to carry it out in action. Still the spirit of liberty has not died out of the North; the attempt to put an eighth slaveholder in the chair of "the model republic," gave occasion for that spirit to act again.
The new idea is not hostile to the distinctive doctrine of either political party; neither to free-trade, nor to protection; so it makes no revolution in respect to them: it is neutral, and leaves both as it found them. It is not hostile to the general theory of the American State, so it makes no revolution there; this idea is assumed as self-evident, in the Declaration of Independence. It is not inimical to the theory of the Constitution of the United States, as set forth in the preamble thereto, where the design of the Constitution is declared to be "To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
There are clauses in the Constitution, which are exceptions to this theory, and hostile to the design mentioned above; to such, this idea will one day prove itself utterly at variance, as it is now plainly hostile to one part of the practice of the American Government, and that of both the parties.
We have had several political parties since the Revolution: the federalists, and anti-federalists,—the latter shading off into republicans, democrats, and loco focos; the former tapering into modern whigs, in which guise some of their fathers would scarcely recognise the family type. We have had a protective party and an anti-protective party; once there was a free-trade party, which no longer appears in politics. There has been a National Bank party, which seems to have gone to the realm of things lost on earth. In the rise and fall of these parties, several dramas, tragic and comic, have been performed on the American boards, where "One man in his time plays many
