Government, for the violation of neutrality. Col. Worth, Mr. Garrow, the Marshal, and other officers of the United States, appear to have done their duty with activity, energy, and effect." 66 The following is an extract from the New York Gazette, of November 26th, in reference to a petition said to have been got up at Ogdensburg, by certain sympathisers," to the Canadian authorities, in behalf of some American citizens, taken prisoners in the affair of Prescott; and we think it may be accepted as a fair expression of American feeling :— "Here are a body of brigands, who go deliberately into a peaceful territory, burn the houses of quiet and inoffensive citizens over their heads, and murder some forty or fifty of them at their own firesides. ... We have no particular desire to see them shot or hanged --though no man who wishes well to his race can have any reasonable objection to either-but we most sincerely and heartily hope, that no soul of them will ever be permitted again to polute his native soil. Let them be sent to the very centre of New Holland." NOTES. NOTE A. Page 3. Nomenclature of American Political Parties. Whigs is the more common name now assumed and applied to the great conservative party in America, a mis-. nomer to an English ear. All such names, as is known, are the results of accident. President Jackson's bold and high-handed administration obtained for him among his opponents, and for popular effect, the royal appellative of King Andrew I. Of course his supporters were Tories, and the opposite party Whigs. Tory, however, is little current, while Whig generally obtains. The most common name now applied to the radicals is Loco-Focos. Origin thus: The Democratic party of the city of New York got into a squabble, and had some fierce contention. On the occasion of a public meeting, it was whispered, that the minority had conspired to blow out the lights, and thus to break up the assembly. Whereupon, the other party came with their pockets furnished with Loco-Foco matches, and triumphed, in a riotous sort of way, to be sure. Hence the Loco-Focos. The secession called themselves Conservatives, and they still make a small party of schismatics from the Democratic ranks, though that is not the sense in which we use the term. Under the Jeffersonian dynasty, the two great parties in the nation were designated Federalists and Democrats. But Federalist has long since become obsolete. A Jacksonian was of course synonymous with Democrat. Numerous have been the party names, that have prevailed transiently. What will come next we know not, unless, in the whirlpool of change, all parties should be confounded, and puzzled in making out their own muster-rolls. NOTE B. Page 7. M. de Tocqueville's Democracy of America. It is due to M. de Tocqueville to say, that his work is a book of Commentaries properly, and all the more valuable and creditable on that account. He had time for observation, spared no research, travelled thoroughly, enjoyed every facility, social and literary; was himself an accomplished jurist—as would appear-qualified for useful comparisons, fitted in temper for the task he undertook, and has astonished the Americans themselves, for the accuracy, depth, and philosophical character of his remarks. He began at the beginning, dove to the bottom, and pervaded all the known and unknown regions of American society; drew out from its profundities a vast amount of its hidden secrets, and fished up pearls and treasures of inestimable value. He analysed American society, and disclosed its elements; showed wherein it is weak, and wherein it is strong, how one attribute affects another, and how apparent discrepancies in the parts constitute the harmony of the whole, so far as harmony could be found. Nevertheless, he was more excellent at analysis; he could show the parts better than the body. He has left the field an unformed creation—a chaos of original, mighty, and conflicting elements, dubious what result they may yet work out under the face of heaven-a picture contingently true and contingently false. |