The Daily Union

Resurrection of the Galphins.-Responsibilities of a Whig Administration.

Just four years ago a presidential election was pending, and the whig party came before the country asking its confidence and support. Then they had "no principles for the public eye." The action of the recent Whig National Convention was reversed, and in 1848 the South got the candidate while the North succeeded, without much effort, in preventing the adoption of a platform.

Seizing upon the reputation of an honest but simple soldier, who professed to entertain no political principles whatsoever, and to understand nothing that a military drill could not teach, they made him the stalking-horse of their ambition, and the instrument by which to get possession of the spoils of office.

There was one device, however, which they successfully employed to delude the people, and to draw recruits from the ranks of the democracy. They represented the whig party as the enemy of proscription, and they solemnly promised that, in the event of the election of General Taylor, no office-holder should suffer for opinion's sake.

Eagerly supported by the whigs, intent only upon the attainment of patronage and power, and by that numerous class of moderate men who claimed to be the adherents of neither party, and who regarded him as standing in their position, General Taylor was elected to the presidency.

At once he inaugurated a whig administration. His cabinet was composed of the most proscriptive partisans. The political guillotine was established, and it did its work with inexorable cruelty.

The country saw at once that the no-party professions of the whigs, and their hypocritical execration of the practice of proscription, had been employed simply as a device, a cheat, and a fraud; and perhaps there was never so sudden and violent a revulsion in popular sentiment as that witnessed during the first few months of the Taylor administration.

The tide upon which the soldier candidate had been elevated to the presidency suddenly receded, and left him a wreck upon the strand-plundered by the creatures who fed upon the treasure of his well-earned reputation, and lashed by the angry waves of an outraged and indignant public sentiment.

He knew nothing of public affairs, or of public men. Simple and unsuspecting, he readily fell into the snares of intriguing and unscrupulous politicians. Honest men-men of dignity and character-stood aloof, unwilling to compete with fawning sycophants for his confidence and favor; and, without help, he became the victim and the instrument of the Galphins.

His ignorance of the duties of his position compelled him to abandon the administration of the government to his subordinates, and made it impossible for him to detect their malversations. And thus it was that the administration of General Taylor became a by-word and a reproach.

He was the helpless and unconscious, and therefore the guiltless, instrument of a whig cabinet. His country will forgive him, because he knew not what he did.

But the party which, for vile and selfish purposes of its own, sacrificed the reputation, and perhaps the life, of a gallant soldier and devoted patriot-the men who, under the shadow of his great name, enriched themselves by the plunder of the country, and reared their fortunes on the ruins of his fame-these are the culprits upon whom an indignant people will execute justice and wreak revenge.

For the administration of General Taylor the whig party are responsible. They took him from the camp and placed him in the presidency. His acts are their acts, and for what he, or rather for what his Galphin cabinet, did, they are answerable at the bar of public opinion.

Not only for that outrageous pillage of the treasury at which the country stood amazed, and continues still to deplore as a national disgrace, but for an arbitrary and despotic attempt to force a new form of government on a territory; for threatening to chastise a sovereign State into submission to the decrees of the executive department of the federal government; for an obstinate and factious opposition to a satisfactory settlement of that sectional strife which shook the Union to its base-for these and for other misdeeds of the Galphin cabinet the people will hold the whig party responsible.

Fillmore is President by accident, but Taylor was President by the action of the whig party, and for whatsoever is reprehensible in his administration they are legitimately and legally responsible.

The time has come when the whig party should be arraigned for the crimes and follies of the Taylor administration. Heretofore they have been beyond the reach of the popular vengeance. The occasion is propitious for the execution of that justice which should be the more terrible for delay.

Another presidential election is depending, and again have the whig party come before the country soliciting its confidence and support. The same faction of unscrupulous demagogues and dangerous agitators which elected Taylor and controlled his administration is now aspiring to power.

The Galphins have risen from the dead, stimulated to extraordinary activity by three years' exile from office. Mr. Fillmore rejected and repudiated them upon his accession to power, and ever since they have been maturing their plans to prostrate him. In that they have succeeded.

Repeating the experiment which was attended with such success in 1848, they have rallied round another military candidate, and are striving to kindle another military enthusiasm. They hope to bewilder the popular mind by the same false pretensions and false issues by means of which they crept into power four years ago.

And their object now is just what it was then. They seek power that they may pervert it to selfish purposes. With the legislative department of the government in the hands of the democratic party, it would be impossible for them to change the policy of the country. All they wish and expect is to possess and enjoy the spoils, unrestrained, as under the administration of Taylor, by the supervision of an honest and capable President.

Should Scott be elected, the country will witness a repetition of the disgraceful practices of the Galphin dynasty. Corruption in high places will again outrage the moral sense of the country; the federal executive will usurp the exercise of illegal powers, and introduce the arbitrary and violent habits of the camp into the administration of the civil affairs of the government; and, finally, all the elements of sectional agitation will be brought into full play and be lashed into intense fury.

Can the people contemplate this prospect with pleasure? Do they want another military President? Shall another Galphin cabinet rule the country?