"Corinne; or, Italy. A Love Story." By Mme. De Stael. T. B. Peterson & Bro., Philadelphia.
"Frank Nelson in the Forecastle; or, The Sportsman's Club among the Whalers." By Harry Castlemon. The same.
"Fridthjof's Saga. A Norse Romance." By E. Fegner, Bishop of Mexico. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago.
"Viking Tales of the North." By Anderson. The same.
"Michigan Board of Agriculture. 1875." Lansing, Mich.
NEBULÆ.
—During the progress of the canvass for the Presidential election—in our September number—we made a promise which seemed about the safest that could be made, but which proved to be a rash one—so rash that at this moment we are entirely unable to redeem it—as unable as if we had undertaken to say which exhibitor at the Philadelphia Exhibition would not get a medal. We said that we would give our readers accurate information, in our December number, as to which party was likely to carry the day. What may happen before these words are printed and laid before our readers we cannot tell; and the experience of the past few weeks has taught us caution as to prediction and promise, even upon apparent certainty; but although the election is more than a month past, we do not know who is to be President, and no one is wiser on this subject than we are. The matter is not one to be treated lightly. It is of the gravest possible importance. No consequence of our civil war is more serious or more deplorable than that condition of the former slave States, which has caused this prolonged uncertainty with regard to the result of the election, and that political state of the whole country which has made this uncertainty the occasion of such intense and embittered feeling, and such desperate measures by the managers of both the great political parties. In fact, the war of secession is not at an end. Twelve years have passed since the military forces of the seceders surrendered to those of the Government, but the contest, or one arising from it, prolongs itself into the present, when those are men who, when the war broke out, were too young to understand its causes. And at the same time we are suffering, in our prostrate trade and almost extinguished commerce, another grievous consequence of the same dire internecine struggle. Truly ourselves and our institutions are sorely tried. A like combination of disastrous circumstances would bring about a revolution in any other country. If we go through this trial safely, we may not only feel thankful, but take some reasonable pride in the national character and in the political institutions that will bear such a long and severe strain without breaking. And yet we all have faith that we shall endure it and come out in the end more stable and more prosperous than ever.
—The cause of this trouble is a change in the political substance and the political habits of the country, of which the average citizen seems to have little knowledge and of which he takes less thought. We do not refer to the change of the functions of the Electoral College from those of a real electing body to those of a mere recorder of the votes of the people of the several States, which has been much remarked upon of late years. That change took place very early; and thus far it has been productive of no trouble or even of inconvenience. If that were all, there would be little need of any modification of our system of electing the President. But there has been of later years—say within the last half century—a change from the political condition of the country to which the Electoral College was adapted. We are in the habit, in patriotic moments, of lauding the wisdom and the foresight of the fathers of the republic. And they were wise, and good, and patriotic men; but as to their foresight, it would seem that we are to-day a living witness that they were quite incapable of seeing into the political future. We are now demanding that the Electoral College shall be abolished, and the President be elected by a direct popular vote; and yet nothing is surer than that the distinct purpose of the founders of our Federal Union was to prevent such an election. Their design was to establish, not a democratic government, working more or less by mass-meeting—a direct vote of the mass of the citizens—but a representative republican government, in which the people should commit their affairs to their representatives, who should have full power to manage them according to their discretion, entirely irrespective of the dictation of their constituents, although not without respect for their opinions and wishes. The doctrine of instruction, by which the representative is turned into a mere delegate—a sort of political attorney—is new and is entirely at variance with the design of the founders of the republic, to which, of course, the Constitution was adapted. It was supposed, assumed as a matter of course, by them that there would always be a body of men of high character and intelligence, who would have sufficient leisure to perform the functions of legislators, governors, and other officers, for a small compensation, and that the people at large would freely commit their affairs to these gentlemen, choosing, of course, those whose general political views were most in accordance with their own. So it was at the time of the war of Independence, and at that of the formation of the Constitution. Of such a political conception the Electoral College was a legitimate product. The "Fathers" didn't mean that the people should decide between the merits of the candidates for the Presidency. They thought—and shall we therefore decry their wisdom?—that a small body of intelligent and well educated men, men of character and social position, accustomed to the study of public affairs, was better fitted to choose such an officer as the President of the United States than the whole mass of the people. Moreover, the people themselves have changed, and have become in substance and in condition something that the "Fathers" did not dream of. States in which the vote of the mass of the citizens should be in the hands of negroes or of emigrants from the peasant class of Europe were not among the political conditions for which their foresight provided.