imaginative people—it has a weird fascination about it peculiar to the poetry of the Northmen.

The two women, whom Frothi had unwittingly bought for ordinary slaves, are discovered to belong to a race of mountain giants. At first they propose to grind out for him those intangible things he had ordered; but recurring to his harsh treatment of them, and remembering their former wild freedom, they rehearse the story of their ancestry and their achievements in battle, as they turn the ponderous Quern; whilst under the excitement of the song, their anger kindles more and more against Frothi. The accumulated wrath of this Greek Chorus swells constantly more dire, until at last, the ettin-maidens grind out of the magical mill-stones a tragical fate to Frothi.

As in almost every people's mythological stories, there is a wide application to this old Scandinavian legend. With us, that system which appeared to possess such miraculous power of grinding out unlimited measures of wealth, prosperity, etc. — alas, whilst we slept under the fatal delusion, and trusted that our application of unrequited labor had somehow blinded the sure sight of the gods, this mill-stone of Fate which we had set agoing, ground out a hostile army in our midst which laid waste the land.

DANGERS OF OUR POLITICAL MACHINERY.

BY JOHN WEISS.

OU cannot improvise a country by bringing together a number of persons. They must wait till something calls out their manhood and fraternity, till truths become self-conscious within them, and every drop of blood goes to nourish moral resolution, before they have a unity of life.

There is now an opportunity to show our preference of truth to politics, and of the broad popular conscience to the manœuvres of party. We must study how to keep the country up to its enthusiasm for real American ideas, and to protect them against the vices which the old parties used to practise. Unless we do this, the reconstruction of the labor and society of the South, though it may be perfect in phrase, will be badly made, with lingering anxieties and perils of intrigue at every turn. We shall always have a party at the North and South to remember the old political tradition and to recur to shifts which made it so often successful. We are now in a situation to renounce these habits in favor of some form of political action which may more directly and purely embody the true American ideas. We have prevailed by a great majority over disaffection, and we have destroyed the military power of treason. Slavery is in our control, and the whole North is flushed with noble feeling; but we have not reformed the anti-republicanism of our political machinery. It hampers us: it is a danger to be considered beside a slaveholding temper; under certain contingencies I can credit that it might restore the life of slavery. We are thankful to-day for what the country gives us; blessings so solid should increase our care that they may be preserved.

These political dangers to which I allude have four sources: 1st, National and Party Conventions: 2d, the Electoral College: 3d, fraudulent voting: 4th, forced and imperfect Naturalization. All these are hostile to the American Idea, which seeks to express itself politically through the direct, undelegated, unforged and unmixed action of the American people. Let me say something under each of the above heads.

1st. National and Party Conventions for the nomination of President and Vice President. A Congressional Caucus used to undertake this business; the last meeting of this kind was held in 1824: and since that time National Conventions have provided the people with their candidates. The objectionable element in a National Convention, irrespective of the party which may assemble, is, that the people has not delegated power to it, and is not represented by it. It is oligarchical in principle and effect. A few local politicians select delegates, who assemble, not to be instrumental in giving form and expression to the popular desire, but to control it; to present it with the candidate who is regarded by a majority of the delegates as most available. How do these delegates arrive at an opinion on this head?

By not consulting a single popular element, but by consulting cliques, in the caucus, the hotel, and the lobby, after manipulation by partizan agents,

officers of government or opposition members of Congress. The Constitution of the United States forbids members of Congress and all persons holding office under the Federal Government from being chosen members of the Electoral College: this was to diminish as far as possible the chances for official and partizan influence. But these very men, who cannot be Electors, exercise more than an Electoral power and privilege, by attending National Conventions and mingling with their business. Can anything be more corrupt? The result is that the people receive the dictation of a few interested men, who desire to acquire power or to retain it; frequently a name entirely unexpected by the country receives the ballot which gives a great party its candidate, who then vote blindly as a party and not as sovereign people. What impure motives, what depraved advantages over personal weakness, what appeals to interest, prejudice, sectional pride, what use of wine, of money, of venal promises, make the air of a National Convention unfit to breathe! But it is quite bad enough that availability is consulted instead of the popular tendencies — that an elegible man is mistaken for a man who ought to be elected, and for whom the instinct of the people would fain vote. The people is obliged, at the arbitrary call of a Convention, to trim its instincts to its candidate. It goes into training under the lead of local politicians, so as to be in condition to cast a solid vote, not for the man of their choice, but for the man who happens to come in at the close of a heated balloting. Sometimes two sets of delegates appear, representing not any real popular diversity of feeling, but only local feuds and intrigues. Sometimes half a dozen resolutions wrangle in the committee-room for a place in a platform, not built by a people to sustain its imposing presence before the country, but by stump orators and veteran campaigners to push their candidate through the canvass. What intrigues, what miserable concessions, what flatulency and moral indigestion. A sweet breath from the prairie and the ccra-field never strays so far. And home go these asphyxiating bags of wind, to be pressed to the popular lips from numerous stands, till the brain reels with availability. What an utter want of faith in the capacity of the people that is so flattered, and bespattered with fine phrases: as if it had no healthy instincts, and could not, if let alone, run together naturally into great masses of feeling, and great preferences for substantial men. Who can hesitate between the instinct of the people at large, and the instincts which roar and growl in the pen of a National Convention? The popular heart makes its selections of men for any purpose, according to the natural currents which travel, like magnetism, through the air, through the earth and through all bodies. A National Convention is a Leyden Jar which sultrily accumulates, till the unexpected result leaps out and substitutes a spasm for the popular strength. We must trust Nature, and return to her. Our best things in Peace and War are done when we confide in the great elements which find their natural points of congression in human hearts. No machinery nor artificial heat can be a substitute for Nature. The people honors its best generals; it could tell very soon, without the help of a Caucus, the difference between McClellan and Butler and Sheridan. It does not need to have a Convention of delegates inform it

who are its greatest orators, its most practical farmers and merchants, its safest engineers; slowly but surely it piles up a decision upon these points which ought to be instructive to the subtle but shallow wire-pullers of a party. If it were a question of Art, of Philosophy and Metaphysics, of Marine Insurance, of literary nicety, of scientific truth, I grant that the people is not the right commission to sit upon these things, and its decision would carry no infallibility. But it could rear a President who knew where the joints of slavery lie, and what is the cement of Liberty. It has sometimes been deceived, and may be deceived again if great pains are taken by self-seeking demagogues; but if let alone, you will find that, "instinct is a great matter." See what it came to in the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, which was no more a result of the Baltimore than it was of the Chicago Convention. Nay, not so much—for when the former could not lead, the latter could alarm. If no Convention had ever sat at Baltimore, the people would have blossomed into Abraham Lincoln by the same overpowering vote. There was a period of six weeks in the summer preceding, when that Convention was prostrate and powerless beneath events. Did the Convention rally? No, the people rallied; and to elect a man who has represented them more nearly than any President since Washington. And yet the politicians say that the people could not elect a man of the people. A popular majority of 420,000 for a distinctive people's man was the answer. Never go to the people to settle canons of Music, Art and Criticism to put men at the head of Orchestras, Museums or Finance; never ask them questions that involve a special culture or a curious knowledge — bid them keep their hands off Philosophy. But if you want a country for such things to thrive in and become illustrious, give to all of them, as God gave the Mariposa Cedars, strong and deep-holding ground, filled with the constituents of symmetry and power.

If the President and Vice President of the United States be elected by an immediate vote of the people, the Electoral College will become superfluous. It is already an aristocratic feature of our Government, cumbrous in its working, and liable to be abused. We know that in 1864, 25,000 votes properly distributed through half a dozen states, would have defeated the manifest will of the people, by throwing the electoral vote of those states for the man who was so pointedly rejected. And if fraud could have accomplished this, it would have been done. What a chance is here for cabal and corruption. And here is another highly instructive calculation, which I find in a number of the New York Independent, published before the last Presidential election. Speaking of the Electoral College, that paper says;

"Let us see how this machinery works. Were the electors equal in number only to the members of the House of Representatives, the case would not be so bad; were they thus apportioned and elected as Members of Congress are, singly, there would be a vast improvement. But we add for each state two senatorial or electors at large, thus directly invading the representative system, and giving the smallest states the greatest proportion of power. For instance: in 1860, there were fifteen states Oregon,