"Whatever it be, the sooner the administration shall show that it does not intend to reverse the policy which brought it into existence the better. Without a prompt, firm, and decisive course in this respect, we shall have nothing—from cabinet minister down to tide-waiter—but discussions of past dissensions, which it is the policy and duty of Genl. Pierce, with all his power as the head of the party, to bury. It is a case in which boldness is the highest prudence. If the party cannot be kept large enough to contain all the great divisions of it which have predominated in powerful States or sections of the Union, it cannot be kept in the majority. In the face of the certain results of any other system, I feel courageous in supporting this, on the principle on which Moreau said he rendered his soldiers brave—by making them fear more to run than to fight.
"Asked the other day by a Hunker friend if I thought it prudent to take a man of Gen. Dix's class, I replied, most certainly to take one such. If past positions on the slavery question as it existed among Democrats, are to be the grounds of a classification, it is proper and necessary to represent the divisions to which Genl. Dix belonged as well as others. Can it be done anywhere else as well as in New York? He will be in line with the majority of the party and the entire government in that State, which the minority of the party there, if that classification be the criterion, will still be amply represented in other members of the cabinet, whereas if he be not taken, and the section to which he belongs be not represented elsewhere, as we may presume it will not, the results will be regarded by the country as a practical exclusion of that interest.
"It seems to be, therefore, desirable to take a man of Genl. Dix's relations; and to take one or more of the States-rights Democrats from States in which they stand with a majority of the party, and to represent the other great interests, as there will be abundant room to do, in the rest of the cabinet. A strong administration cannot be made by combining negations. If it be formed, as it should be, by men who have a predominant regard to its unity and success, the more its members have of the confidence and favor of the interests and States they are respectively taken to represent, the better. Of course I mean only men of qualifications and character, and of fitness in these respects and from their Democratic antecedents—and the objection to whom is merely the part they had in the recent Democratic divisions North and South. Let unfriendly critics, if they please, call such a cabinet mosaic. If the joiner work be good, as I believe it may be, and the materials be of the right general character, I do not care how firm the texture or strong the colors of the parts. It will dovetail the party together for a basis on which the administration may stand securely. Certainly, I assume that in this there will be no violation of principle and honor to shock the confidence of the country. Those who think there is, and have acquiesced thus far, might feel some delicacy that their scruples arise for the first time when they are asking for themselves and on this ground a monopoly of the fruits of the wrong. Restitution to the true owner would be more becoming. If the party that elected Gen. Pierce be an alliance of those who cannot honestly act together, it ought to be dissolved; but if it could honestly unite, there can be no objection to proclaiming the intention to continue that union, or to carrying it out in the most effectual way.
"At the late election, the large popular majorities as well as large electoral votes were in the great States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Notwithstanding the clamor about the identification of Scott with Seward, the South did not do equally well, except in States where personal antipathies to that interest or personal commitments of Whig leaders produced systematic defections. No administration or party can stand without the support of at least two of the great free States. And the conceded abandonment at the outset of the canvass of either of the two largest, especially if it be the first in electoral votes, and of metropolitan action or opinion, usually loses one or both of the others. No man has been elected President against the vote of New York in the six successive elections since it has been cast unitedly and by the people; nor, indeed, ever but in a single instance, the circumstances of which scarcely constitute it an exception. Her vote has been often an unnecessary addition to his majority—and a hopeful contest for it would often enable the other States to do without her; but it is not easy to measure the force of her conceded or apprehended loss, representing, as her population does, elements that affect the equilibrium of so many other States.
"The interest, headed by Gov. Seward, which nominated Scott, is a powerful minority in these great States. Carrying almost the whole Whig party against an existing Whig administration and the influence of the great Whig leaders, it may, as an opposition and surviving those leaders, absorb the third party, now almost holding the balance of power, without disintegrating itself. It will be likely to try the experiment. The defection from it last fall, tho' encouraged by the commanding patronage of the administration and the name of Mr. Webster, was scarcely more than one—certainly not two—per cent., and was confined to a few localities. If the previous State elections had not practically decided the contest, that defection would have been inconsiderable. Hereafter, not only are these disturbing causes stilled, but it will have the cementing influence of a common opposition.
"The characteristics of this interest, in our State politics, have been profligate jobbing and reckless enterprise and expenditure. The only effectual barrier to its predominance has been in the radicals. They include the prominent men who, with Wright, Hoffman, and Flagg, fought all our great financial contests; and a majority of the masses who maintained their measures, although large numbers of the latter were—temporarily, as I believe—detached by the divisions of 1848 and bound with the opposite interest about half of the entire party. While the questions on which they separated were occasional and temporary, questions of honest financial policy and administration are ever present. Indeed, in our time the chief political duty seems to be to protect the people from plunder under the forms of legislation and in the abuse of administration.
"On all these questions, as well as doctrines of States'-rights, free trade, and in most general views of government, the radicals of New York (as I should have remarked while speaking of the relations between them and the State-rights Democrats of the South in a composite cabinet) sympathize with the radical Democracy of the South; and, indeed, are the only unflinching coadjutors the latter have had in New York.
"Agreeing in what is the only safe reliance of constitutional rights, as well as the cardinal point of the Democratic faith—embracing, as each does, the flower of the Democratic youth, enterprise, and energy in its own region—without discussing individual views of the course of either, antecedent to the general reunion of the party, and admitting, if you please, that they are somewhat alike in the boldness with which they maintain their opinions, and repel aggressions on what they deem to be their rights—it is obvious that there are points of sympathy between them which make it easy and natural for them to fraternize, when out of the presence of any immediate course of difference, as they did all through the late Baltimore convention and in its result.
"The radicals of New York include as much talent, courage, enterprise, and fearless devotion as can be found in any party. They have the advantage of being, on an average, half a generation younger than the other. These circumstances, as well as those I have before mentioned, mark them as the future of the Democracy of New York. Since Silas Wright's death they have given their affections to no providential man. They fell into the support of Genl. Pierce with alacrity at the convention, and with generous enthusiasm in the canvass, because they recognized in him qualities in common with those of their lamented leader, attested as well by the warm regard generated between them in former years by mutual sympathies, as by the whole career of the survivor.
"As a matter of mere party calculation, I do not think it wise, with reference to the reconstitution and reconsolidating of the party on a comprehensive basis, to leave them the only large and powerful class not represented in the cabinet; nor, in undertaking to represent them, to pass over a statesman of great merit and in all respects unobjectionable, unless because he is one of their number. The administration will, I believe, ensure their support by its principals and measures. But looking to the condition of domestic politics, in New York and the other great States on which the strength of the party mainly depends, I do not think it would be a mistake to add the cordiality that comes from a sense of equality and reciprocity in party relations and the energetic and efficient co-operation which will result. There are other considerations, but my letter has already reached an unconscionable length, my apology for which is, that writing my thoughts as they arose while writing they would not stop, and I could not—I have set them down frankly, not without some delicacy, at seeming so much to advise, but remembering that nobody need follow, while I would be unwilling to mislead. If I can contribute any information or suggestion to the general stock which you have a right to advise, and He whose province it is to judge must needs gather from all quarters, my end will be attained. I am too sensible of the difficulties of filling up a cabinet on principles which seem essential, or any general principal and at the same time securing the highest individual fitness, worth and weight and a reasonable concurrence of our friends in the various localities,—to be willing to increase them. A just and firm policy will solve them, as nearly as is ever attainable in such cases, to the satisfaction of the country. With the best wishes of one who may speculate safely because he is without the responsibility of acting—and who, except as a citizen, a Democrat, and a friend of the new administration, has, and can have, no interest in the result, though not exempt from the influence of sympathies of opinion and association in attempting to take a fair view,