But there have been mysterious movements, of late, which raise a violent presumption that our Democratic captain and officers are altering the rig and adapting the hold of the vessel to suit the demands of a traffic condemned by the whole civilized world.  They are painting out the old name, letter by letter, and putting “Conservative” in its stead.  They seem to fancy there is such a thing as a slave-trade-wind, and are attempting to beat up against what they profess to believe a local current and a gust of popular delusion.  We think they are destined to find that they are striving against the invincible drift of Humanity and the elemental breath of God.  It is an ominous consistency with which we charge the Democratic Party.

Mr. Cushing affirms, that the Republicans have no argument but the “cry of Slavepower!”—­which is as eloquent a one as the old Roman’s Delenda est Carthago, to those who know how many years of bitter experience, how many memories of danger and forebodings of aggression, are compressed in it.  But he is mistaken; Democratic administrations have been busy in supplying arguments, and we complain rather of their abundance than their paucity.  The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas policy, which even office-holders who had gulped their own professions found too nauseous to swallow, and the Dred Scott decision,—­if these be not arguments, then history is no teacher, and events have no logic.

Mr. Cushing adroitly evades the real matter in issue, and assumes that it is a mere question of the relative amount of federal office secured by the North and the South respectively.  This may be a very natural view of the case in a man whose map of nationality would seem to be bounded North by a seat in Congress, East by a Chinese Embassy, West by an Attorney-Generalship, and South by the vague line of future contingency; but it hardly solves the difficulty.  With characteristic pluck he takes the wolf by the ears.  The charge being, that the power of the Slave States has been gaining a steady preponderance over that of the Free States by means of the federal administration, he answers it by saying that he has made it a subject of “philosophic study,” and has found that Massachusetts has had a “pretty fair run of the power of the Union,”—­whatever that may be.  The phrase is unfortunate, for it reminds one too much of the handsome competence with which a father once claimed to have endowed his son in giving him the run of the streets since he was able to go alone.  But let us test Mr. Cushing’s logic by an equivalent proposition.  He is executor, we will suppose, of an estate to be divided among sixteen heirs; he pays A his portion, and claims a discharge in full.  What would not Mr. Buchanan give for a receipt by which office-seekers could be so cheaply satisfied!