"That equitable and sensible plan having met some unexpected objection, it has been slightly modified; but it will nevertheless be carried out as if unchanged. The business arrangements are most profound and comprehensive. The proprietors who invest a large capital in the enterprise are to have no voice in its editorial management, because that department—the doctrines it maintains, the degree of its ability, its consistency, its integrity, in a word, its whole editorial character—is not supposed to make any difference with the subscription-list or advertising of a newspaper. The modern idea of a complete separation between those who spend and those who pay is to be carried out more fully than in any other joint-stock speculation heretofore known; and gentlemen of first-rate ability in both these departments have been secured. It is not doubted that the result will eclipse anything that has gone before it in the newspaper line. The editor will be paid a double salary for his shares and the sacrifice he will make in relinquishing a lucrative place in the House of Representatives, but without prejudice to his continuance in that post, to which he will be a candidate for re-election.
"The issue of this journal having been postponed from the period first announced, an explanation is due to the public. The paper had become deeply pledged to support the State ticket to be nominated at the Syracuse convention and the regular organization of the Democracy of New York, under the expectation that both would be in adamantine conformity to the principles herein avowed. The editor and founder and their associates were assembled in this city to await the issue of that body; and at the very moment of the bloody scenes of Syracuse were having recourse to the private perusal of the riot act, when, lo! they were themselves thereby incontinently dispersed, and cannot be at once reassembled.
"New York, September 19th, 1853."
TILDEN [INCOMPLETE]
"Dear Sir,—Your letter was received yesterday. I do not think there will be any considerable difficulty in respect to resolutions. The general disposition will be to go to every reasonable extent to disarm those who are predetermined to make mischief. The true and only serious difficulty is to get the convention organized. The plan of those who are hostile to the union of the party is to have two conventions, if it be possible to confuse the public mind as to which really represents the party and its organization. All the moderation, prudence, and liberality consistent with the preservation of the convention must be exercised to avoid a disorganization; or, if that cannot be avoided (as it cannot be, if any considerable minority are bent on it), to leave the disorganizers with as little of a case as possible. The danger is in the large number of contested seats—real and pretended. In about half of the cases there is no shadow of claim on the part of the hard-shell contestants; and such cases can be multiplied indefinitely, so as to form with the extreme men in the convention and the contestants out of it a sufficient number to be a quorum of a separate body. I think we can stand the large number of these now known, if the moderate and union Hunkers can be held, as we anticipate. I have heard from various sources that the President feels the same solicitude which your letter expresses, and that he thinks that the defeat of the party here would revive and reorganize the Whigs all over the country. In that he is quite right. On the encouragement of a disaster in this State, the Whig party would spring to new and full life. It was so in 1837 and in 1846, and in both those cases the results spread over the whole country. Neither you nor the President need doubt that we are fully aware of the peril, both to the party in the Union and in this State; or that any reasonable effort will be omitted to avert it.
"But we are put to great odds when 30 or 35 of our districts are neutralized by contested claims, and in all this part of the State the mass of the patronage of the genl. government is used most unscrupulously against us, and—"
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT TO TILDEN
"New York, Nov. 23, 1854.
"My dear Sir,—I have called at your office twice to-day on some business of my own. Will you oblige me by letting me know when you are in your office, that I may come and bore you?