Burlington Free Press

The Maine Election.—Next Monday the Maine election takes place, an election which is justly regarded on all hands as the first really serious encounter of the great political campaign now pending.—The Southern and Western elections which have already occurred, have been, comparatively speaking, mere skirmishes between light armed troops; but in Maine, on Monday next the solid columns of the heavy armed will approach each other; on the one side the Whig friends of liberty and law, and on the other the loco foco mercenaries of executive despotism.

The struggle will be fierce and desperate. The 'office holding democrats,' infuriated by the prospect of being compelled to relinquish 'the spoils,' of being stripped with disgrace of the offices and honors so basely obtained and so scandalously misused, will leave no means untried, however profligate and wicked, to deceive and mislead the weak and ignorant, to corrupt, to bribe, and even to buy the venal.

There is not one mean and malignant passion, there is not one short sighted prejudice, the offspring of ignorance, as all prejudices are, to which they are not basely appealing: and even the discreet and virtuous are liable to become the victims of...