Attempts are now made, as we write, to introduce into public use another article, called the Fifteenth Amendment, and to put upon it the Constitutional patent-mark, an article which is calculated to hinder any evilly disposed person from stripping off from another at election time,—a period when a certain strange rabies seizes Americans and makes them inclined to tear each other and their clothing,—their electoral vestments, or voting suits, especially if they do not suit them. The new pattern is black and white, and although it has had as yet a checkered fate,—some preferring it all white, some all black, others white with a leaden-colored border,—it is thought by shrewd buyers that the novelty will soon come into general use. These last-named goods are far from being fashionable at the South.
One of the most surprising characteristics of our fashionable Constitutional shopping-place is, that everybody finds here just the article to suit his taste, judgment, and even his fancy, whimsical as it may be. If Mr. J. C. Calhoun or Mr. J. Davis wants a complete outfit for States rights, he walks in, and has no difficulty in finding it just to his liking, and in a considerable variety of shades and materials. He puts his hand on one of the new styles marked “Article X,” and is confirmed in his choice by reading upon the label the manufacturer’s description: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” He turns around, and, traversing other departments, discovers sundry other articles of like style to match these. He also lights upon more gauzy, thin, or fine-spun, fleecier goods to throw around the exposed shoulders of the States.
On the other hand, if Mr. D. Webster or Mr. H. Clay desires a thorough suit for the central Federal figure of Uncle Samuel, he is shown directly to the sections where he can procure quantities of them; hats to cover banking brains; coats and vests to put over the inner works, to aid digestion and promote internal improvement; pants, hosiery, and boots to keep up our Uncle’s advancing strides over mountains, plains, and rivers. Such customers are, of course, walked up directly to section eight, and there are shown in a large box ample and well-made garments of the desired description. On the top of this box the fabricators have put this explanation: “To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”
It was supposed by many of the original members of the firm, who got up this grand Constitutional bazaar, that Uncle Sam’s concern had the exclusive right to make those bright, popular buttons called “coin,” or “money”; but it was discovered in a very short time that there was an elastic provision in the articles of copartnership, which allowed the individual members of the firm to manufacture, each on his own account, these shining disks, and even to invent and put forth for sale paper substitutes, which at length became so much in vogue as to drive the metallic article, at times, wholly out of the market. Paper collars have not had a livelier run, nor damper shrinkages than these.
Statements are often put forth by people sitting on benches and having a grave, sometimes a grave-clothes air, doubting the right of the Federal store to stamp exclusively and to put out for its own particular profit, a variety of things, kept there in well-locked sections; it being claimed that the composing members have a concurrent power to make, stamp, and vend the same goods. On some of these points the discussion is still going on, and as the partners are a jealous, sharp set, it is not likely soon to terminate.
Much trouble has arisen in regard to a large number of bills of credit which have been issued by, and are still outstanding against, the large Federal concern. Some have questioned their power to manufacture this kind of paper and make it equal to hard coin. Others have doubted the legality of the step which the firm took in making this paper good for certain purposes, and not receivable as pay for certain kinds of debts due to the house, arguing that if coin was better than paper, then the paper could not justly be made an equivalent; and if no better, then that paper ought in all cases to be received as well by the firm as by others. After much argument before them, however, that popular court, the ballot, gave a verdict against those who so reasoned, and rendered a decree that, if there were no other good reasons, the arguments pro interesse suo and ad necessitatem, especially when impelled by the motor of war, were too convincing to be set aside, and so legalized the discrimination.
Very many people make an unauthorized use of the bazaar. They go in for articles so absurd, so trifling, or so unusual, that all the clerks laugh outright, as soon as the inquiries are made. Some people, especially members of Congress, candidates for office, small lawyers, raised by short hand-levers up towards a large occasion, which they find it difficult to reach, when talking of the things themselves, their own pockets, or their chances of offices and places, assert, when told that such things do not exist, that they can find them in the old Constitutional store.
Accordingly, they post thither, and make themselves ridiculous or disagreeable, by tumbling over and soiling the goods that lie there in honest piles, to find their peculiar article. Some of these shoppers last mentioned are very keen-eyed, gifted with those optics spoken of by Hudibras, which see
“Things which are not to be seen,”
and fancy that they see, in their mind’s eye, patterns of what they are after, when in truth the patterns are not at all similar. If the goods found are speckled, checked, spotted, or figured, and the sample which they have brought has any specks, checks, spots, or figures in it, bearing the most general resemblance, but readily distinguishable from the goods inspected by any the most careless observer, if disinterested, they hasten away and proclaim very loudly that the same goods, of precisely the same material, color, make, and style, are found in heaps in the Constitutional shop. There is nothing so sharp as such eyes, except the single eye to the public good.