BEFORE Our present number can be disseminated, and its contents fairly digested, a very important election is to be made by the people of the State of New York, between the old and the new Constitution.

The question of a new Constitution for the State of New-York is a question that concerns the Union. The action of a leading member of the confederacy naturally influences the conduct of all the rest, both by affording example and provoking to imitation. The political spirit of the Empire State may invigorate or enfeeble, purify or contaminate, the temper of the nation. And if, where there is a comparatively settled and sober state of feeling, where the landmarks are not new and the attachments not recent, where the prudence and phlegm of comparative age and experience operate as an invisible restraint-if in a State like New York there is a revolutionary, fickle and radical spirit in politics, if law is there held light and variable, if change is regarded with indifference or with relish, what may be expected from the younger, more buoyant and excitable children of the family? Should grave old Massachusetts forget her staid propriety in the least degree, or for a moment, a fit of reckless levity might be looked for and be pardoned in daughters of the Union yet in their teens! If broad-shouldered, heavy-sided New York is seen capering in the air, and flinging her Constitution

about as a plaything, what mad pranks may we not expect from the light limbs and nimble blood of the younger children of the confederacy, who naturally take their manners from their matronly sisters? We trust the jealousy of state rights and the independent sovereignty doctrine are not to be carried into the region of moral obligation. If we are not responsible to each other's legislatures, we are to each other's public sentiment. We each owe to each other and to the Union, to consider in our State politics, what is profitable for the whole country, and for the sister States. New York has no moral right to ignore the consequences of her policy to other members of this confederacy, and to the common country! As an organ of the Whig party of the Union, and of the national conservatism, we demand that New York shall consider whether or no her example is to be followed and can be recommended to the other States of this Union!

We are pledged to "stand by the Constitution," the sacred instrument of our National Liberties. We hold the Constitutions of the separate States, so far as they are in the spirit of the American Magna Charta, to be part and parcel of it. And when, in any particular State, there is an invasion of the principles, or a grieving of the spirit, of the National Constitution, although only in a local form and degree, we hold ourselves pledged by our motto to strike then and there

for the Constitution. If our National Constitution decays, it will perish by the withering of the branches, not of worms at the root. If, over-loaded with political fruit, and civil and social blessings, the branches proudly refuse to lean upon the props which experience has placed beneath their perilous luxuriance, and so break with the weight of their unguarded greatness, the parent trunk must die of the bleeding wounds in her limbs, however sound her own stock, or deep struck her roots. We feel, therefore, that we stand by the Union, when we stand by her children; that as a mother pines with the sickness of her children, and convalesces with their recovery, we save the Parent Constitution, when we heal or protect the Constitution of her daughters. And let us not forget, as lovers of the Union, as sticklers for the federal existence and rights of the country, that an example safe for a State like New York to give, may be fatal to other States to follow, and so fatal to the Union. Whatever may be the Constitution of the Empire State, there exists there a public sentiment which is comparatively conservative. We are relatively an established and settled community, with some saving prescriptive customs, feelings, and objects of veneration. The northern Atlantic States are near enough to the shores of the Old World to catch the breath of her venerable experience, disinfected by the great ocean over which it sweeps, and invaluable to them in its viewless influence an influence the more legitimate, because owing everything to its intrinsic worth, and nothing to bare authority. They possess a literature, a pulpit, seats of learning, and social customs and usages, which are all highly conservative. They can bear much latitude in their political manners, and much vicissitude in their written laws, because both are interpreted and applied by an unwritten law, which does not partake their licentiousness or variableness. But it is not so with others, and many of the States. Their Constitutions and laws are meant for, and construed as, business papers; referred to as practical and precise guides of conduct. Every article in them tells upon the character of the people. If radicalism and ancient unrepresentative democracy are theoretically recognized in their instruments of government, they will get practically embodied in their state conduct

and civil, social, and domestic institutions and customs. We shall have downright, dishonest, and practical repudiation_in Mississippi, when we have only delay and culpable want of pecuniary punctiliousness, with loss of credit, but not of honor, in Pennsylvania! What is repressed and gently frowned upon by the State government of New York, as antirentism, will be openly avowed and gloried in in Illinois as anti-Mormonism. What is mere mischievous theory with the older States, will be thorough, destructive practice with the new ones. Thus, for aught we know, there may be private purity and general rectitude enough, and a sufficiently established reverence for the courts in New York, to make the experiment now proposed, of judges elected by the people, not as fatal to their character and usefulness as we fear it will be, and according to all ordinary calculations must be; but however that shall prove, what could be said in favor of popularly chosen judges in some of the States that might be named, who even now prefer Lynch law to any other, and who would probably put in the chairs of justice the very men who after mock trials had hung offensive citizens at any time upon the nearest tree? Is the State of New York willing to take the responsibility of setting her sisters the example (and of being forever quoted as authority for it) of a radicalism which it would require all her own moral strength and social conservatism to endure, but which must ruin the tender Constitutions of the younger States? We doubt if she has put the question to herself with any soberness, or full sense of its meaning?

Bearing these thoughts in mind, we propose to offer a few discursive remarks upon the new Constitution, incidental to, and illustrative of, the real matter in our thoughts, which is the necessity of an increased fidelity to our political duties and privileges-especially the great duty of making whatever of virtue and intelligence we may possess felt in the only place where it can be decisively exertedat the polls. But first of the new Constitution.

We regret that the labors of the Convention have been protracted so nearly up to the time of the election, that a very inadequate period is left for that careful study and deliberate consideration which so important a document deserves, before it is accepted as the supreme law of the land. We are not,

however, among those who are disposed to blame the Convention for the length of time they have given to the duty committed to them. Either they should have begun earlier, or the election should have been deferred. We are not of those who think Constitutions can be made or changed in a hurry. It is with fear and trembling that we see any agitation of the question of constitutional emendation, but if it is stirred, we wish it to be thoroughly, anxiously, and scrupulously pondered

It is not our present purpose formally to discuss the Constitution now offered to the people of this State. We are not prepared upon so short notice to express decided opinions upon so grave a subject. Whatever pertains to the most sacred instrument of this State and people we would ever handle with reverence and caution. The result of the deliberations of a Convention, solemnly (?) appointed by the people of New York to amend the Constitution, ought to be very soberly and thoughtfully considered by him who attempts to criticise it. But we must exceedingly regret that the people are to be called to pass upon the labors of the Convention with so little time for personal reflection, or consideration of the commentary, which the proper guides of public sentiment would doubtless make upon it after calm meditation of its provisions. A full year would not be too long a time to agitate the merits of the new Constitution.

If we speak our full sentiments, we must say, that, without any regard to the merits of the new Constitution, we should be better pleased to bear with the faults of the old, (if that is a fit epithet for a document of twenty-five years' standing,) than disturb the reverence just beginning to gather around it. There is no pretence that the present Constitution is a bad one. It has defects like all human works; but under it we have lived a quarter of a century, a happy, free, and prosperous people. One of the most respectable assemblies of men ever convened for any political purpose, exhausted their wisdom, patience, and patriotism in devising it. The lustre which their names have gathered since, throws back a mellow light upon the work of their earlier lives. The brilliant reputation of such men as Tompkins,

Kent, Jay, Platt, Livingston, Van Vechten, Wheaton, Tallmadge, Van Buren, many of whom are still with us, blends with the glory of the present Constitution, and we behold its displacement from the inmost shrine of our archives, with much the same sorrow with which we see the venerable authors and amenders of it surrendering their places on earth to their degenerate sons. We hardly dare to consider with what emotions the surviving members of the Convention of '21 have followed the proceedings of the recent Convention! It was, for the most part, with extreme reluctance that that intelligent and patriotic body consented to any important change in the instrument they found at the basis of our laws; and when they separated, it was with a feeling of much anxiety and sober question, whether on the whole their labors had been for good or evil, and with an earnest hope and belief that at any rate, our laws would not again for ages be subjected to the peril of a constitutional revision. We can hardly doubt that the majority of that very Convention had voted against the proposition for calling their own body into existence. For no men are so conscious of the evil of instability in the fundamental law of a people as those who have the acutest perception of its particular defects, and are most like to be commissioned with its emendation. This is indeed a great security for the caution and conservatism of such a body, and would generally be a perfect one, if there were not a stringency in public sentiment which compels every representative body to do not what it thinks best, but what it knows to be expected. The Convention does in the main what it is sent to do, and not what its independent judgment might lead it to do. Prudence and experience have, under these circumstances, for their only field, the problem, how in yielding their own inclinations and judgments, they may give in the least that is possible to the popular caprice and love of change. Thus the Constitution having come out of the hands of one Convention in comparative safety, and with as few changes as could possibly be expected, was deemed by the most sagacious men in the body to have had a providential escape, from a peril not likely soon to recur. But some of the noblest and

wisest of them are yet alive to see a more radical revision attempted, perhaps accomplished, with a provision in the Constitution itself, that every twenty years the people shall be invited to amend the fundamental law of the State! We doubt not the surviving members of the last Convention deplore, with peculiar sensibility, what now seems destined to be a constitutional instability of the Constitution.

And what improvement in a free and even moderately good Constitution can repay that loss of confidence in the fixedness of the Law of Laws, which must attend even the most unfrequent and cautious changes! There are wrongs, errors, and perversities wrought into the Constitutions of many foreign States, which justify revolution, terrible price of justice and freedom as it is! and when men are ready to risk their lives and fortunes for political reform, it is time they should have it; for it proves that life and fortune are not worth possessing without it. But for common grievances, much more for slight imperfections or uncertain improvements, or perhaps only to render the instrument nearer to theoretical perfection, to disturb the inviolable character which ought to belong to the supreme law; to accustom the people to think it can be changed whenever it suits their caprice; to make it the subject of party discussion and the theme of newspaper criticism; is to strike without provocation or reason at the root of patriotism, of order and of prosperity.

The time has not come in this new country and in these recent States, when the value of the reserved power hoarded in a traditionary reverence for the Constitution is capable of being estimated. Change is a comparatively small evil to us now, when the elements of prosperity are so large, that no possible instability of the Laws can repress them. Our Institutions are so superabundantly beneficent in their general character, that no abuse of them can, for the present, make them otherwise than benignant. Our People, for the most part, feel their inde

pendence of political operations and interests. The laws press so lightly, taxes are so small, the avenues to enterprise and success so numerous, the propitiousness of soil and climate, the extent and cheapness of territory so great, that the People care very little in their hearts for a Constitution which ostensibly does little for them, and whose principal charm is, that it meddles so little with them in any way. The law is not a visible guardian presence in our country as yet. We do not seem to need its protection. There has been, as yet, little to call out the most dangerous passions of the people. The means of living are too easily acquired for great and alarining jealousy to exist between the rich and poor. Land is too cheap and abundant for agrarian animosities to wax dangerous. Taxes are too light to be deemed burdensome, or to provoke any disposition to revolution. While this state of things lasts, it matters little what hold the Constitution has upon the love and veneration of the people. But this condition of things cannot be permanent. Nay, while we celebrate it, it is going and gone. Already the first outbreaks of conspiracy against the highest law of the state have been witnessed. Already we have felt the need of that settled respect for the Constitution, which no shifting, changeable Charter of rights can secure! And, as our population becomes denser, the inequalities of fortune more marked, the difficulties of success greater, the more common and alarming will be the explosions of the ordinary political passions of our nature, and the greater the necessity for strong and energetic laws based upon a sacred and inviolable Constitution. It is against the inevitable future, that we ought to be laying up a reserved fund of veneration for Law.

The time is rapidly coming, when the politics of our general and our state governments will have an interest derived from a new sense of their instant connection with our individual well-being. There is no such feeling now, except in the minds of the

commercial or manufacturing classes, who are not like to look beyond their immediate concerns. Indeed, we must needs ascribe much of the apathy to changes in the Constitution to the same source from which springs a wide and general indifference to political interests among our citizens. There is no country on the face of the earth where politics makes more noise, and at the same time excites less real interest, than in our own. There is, of course, a considerable class among us who live on the excitement they are able to stir up at election times. The exercise of the elective franchise still possesses a novelty and importance for the middling interest, for newly adopted citizens, and for recent graduates in freedom at home, which gives our elections a factitious excitement, in which the grave and more deeply interested portion of the community do not participate, because it does not grow out of the questions at is sue. There is reason to doubt whether the wisest and most honest portion of the country makes itself felt at the ballot box, except on rare and extraordinary occasions. Everybody knows that the vote by which the present Convention was called was an exceedingly light one. The occasion seemed not sufficiently grave to call forth the judgment and will of the reflecting! The people wanted to mend the Constitution-that was all! It was already a cracked vessel! It had been repaired before-it might be again! Who cared about the Constitution? Who had read it-who had suffered from it, or been benefited by it? Was it worth a walk of half a mile, in an unusual direction, to say a churlish No! to so indifferent a request? And thus, by default as much as anything, a Convention is permitted! And now, is it of much more consequence who constitute the Convention, than the question whether we will have one? Very little surely. It cannot be concealed that a gross indifference characterized the choice of delegates to revise the Constitution. We doubt not the general respectability and honesty of that body. But we think, without the slightest bias from party feelings, that it would be absurd to

compare it with the Convention of '21. We look in vain for the names of our wisest, best known and most trusted citizens. We find ourselves, for the most part, in a company of strangers, and men who, if distinguished, have achieved their notoriety chiefly in the proceedings of the Convention. This, surely, is not the fault of the body. We sent them there, and they have doubtless done their duty to the best of their knowledge and ability. True, they have seen fit to make our judges elective by the people, and instead of simplifying and condensing the Constitution, have entered into details which must create constant necessity for revision-for which they have made most liberal provision! But we have no right to complain of the conduct of agents selected with so little anxiety or care-nor is it probably of much use to enter any objection to the chief innovations upon the Constitution. We do not call a Convention to make trifling changes. It must do something to distinguish its labors, and meet the expectations of the people. We have many fears that the New Constitution is as good as accepted, and doubt not it would be, if it were ten times as defective as it is. We do not deny that it is, in some respects, superior to the old. But that it has vital mistakes and most miserable innovations, is, we doubt not, the conviction of all those who ought to direct the public sentiment.

It is enough for us that the judges are made directly elective by the peopleand for a limited and comparatively short period of time!

We had thought ourselves badly enough off, that our highest judges all left office at the very period of their greatest usefulness, when their passions had cooled and their judgment ripened, and just as the experience of the courts had brought their wisdom to the highest pitch; in short, at the time when other nations and other states are accustomed to think their judges at the very height of their usefulness! We had thought it bad enough to see men who had devoted the energies of their maturity to the judicial office, turned off upon their own resources-which no