Weekly National Intelligencer

SOUND AND TIMELY REFLECTIONS.

It is known to our readers that the annual opening of the session of the Legislature of Massachusetts is always signalized by the delivery of what is called an "Election Sermon," by a divine selected for that purpose because of qualities which are deemed to befit him for the office of rightly counselling the rulers of the State. And we have generally observed that these discourses are equally remarkable for their appropriateness and their ability, such of them as we can recall being at the furthest remove from the assumption and declamatory style too common among a class of clergymen who convert the pulpit into the rostrum. At the opening of the Massachusetts Legislature, on the 7th instant, the "Election Sermon" was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Walker. We have before us only a newspaper report of some of the topics treated by the reverend speaker, but even this is sufficient to show that the eulogy passed upon it by the Boston Daily Advertiser is not misplaced when it says that nobody will accuse him of failing to appreciate the full significance of the issues involved in the struggle in which the nation is now engaged, nor of taking too dark a view of the future. But, adds our contemporary, he is nevertheless not blinded to the distinct perception of the origin of the distressing state of things in which the country is involved. While the country has otherwise been gradually improving in the morals and in the private virtues of the people, while we have been enjoying an extraordinary material prosperity, while in literature and in art we present a brighter page than at any former period of our history, our politics had gradually become debased and corrupted.

It is in this deplorable decay of public virtue, and not in its outcropping symptoms, that Dr. Walker finds the deep-rooted seat of the maladies which now afflict the State, and his remarks under this head are at once so forcible and so just that we quote their substance as we find them reported in the columns of our Boston contemporary:

"We take a superficial view of the civil war if we think to ascribe the whole to slavery or anti-slavery. Either this controversy would not have arisen, or it would have been comparatively harmless, if the ties which once bound us firmly together as one people had not been rotting away for years under the influence of an unhealthy and disloyal tone of public sentiment.

"While changes have thus been going on in the public mind, changes equally important have been going on in the Government, or in the manner and spirit in which it is administered—all tending unhappily in the same direction. We hear a great deal about restoring 'the Union as it was.' One is tempted to ask, as it was when? Since the generation of its founders a new character has gradually been given to some of our most cherished institutions. Witness the powers now assumed by our political conventions to determine every thing in advance—the practice of making availability, not merit, the test of candidateship, and the doctrine that the spoils belong to the victor. Adopted by all parties, these practices are defended by no enlightened member of any party, except perhaps as necessary evils; but, if necessary, why not from the beginning?

"How essentially anti-democratic these changes are is evident from the fact that they take the conduct of affairs almost entirely out of the hands of the people. To be sure, the forms of a free suffrage are left us, and this suffrage has been made universal; but to what purpose if the whole is merely to sanction a foregone conclusion agreed upon elsewhere? A printed list of names is thrust upon me, which I transfer to the ballot-box, with the not very pleasing or flattering consciousness that I am used by somebody, I know not whom, for some purpose, I know not what. Nor does the evil end here. If the power which is thus taken from the people were made over to the Government, what is lost to Liberty might be gained to Order. But it is far otherwise. The power is made over to a set of men working out of sight, and under no official responsibilities. Out of this state of things have grown the party and sectional jealousies and irritations which have had so much to do with our present troubles. The unnatural and unrighteous alienation of the Southern mind must not be ascribed to a spontaneous movement of the people, nor to the legitimate working of our institutions. It is the accursed fruit of the irresponsible, underground machinations of the leaders of party.

Nor is this all. Our greatest men are dissuaded from entering the field of politics. We never had greater men in science, in learning, or in art; never greater lawyers, greater merchants, or greater engineers. But the new doctrines make an enlightened and experienced statesmanship a disqualification for the highest offices in the National Government. It is a grave mistake to suppose that the ascendency of great men in a republic is unnecessary or inconsistent; in proof of which our own experience in the Revolution and in the time of the formation of the Constitution may be adduced.

"Thus two sets of influences have long been at work to demoralize the politics of this country: one with speculative men, undermining the old reverence for the Constitution and the laws; the other, with practical men, substituting loyalty to party for loyalty to the State; the joint effect of both being to weaken the Government and at the same time to bring a succession of strains upon it, heavier and heavier, until at length it has given way.

"Where, then, is our hope? Not in empty boasts or threats, and still less in a disposition to despise the power opposed to us. Our hope is to be found in the change of character and purpose which the public danger and trials are likely to effect in all classes and all parties. Because our liberties had cost our generation nothing, we thought them safe. Peril, calamity, mortification will bring us to our senses again—they have already begun to do it."