growing knowledge shed upon the path, determine afresh their future course.

field.

For the forth-coming election there are at present, and seem likely to be, but two parties of sufficient importance to merit consideration who occupy the political They are known by the names of the Democratic party and the Republican party. The question therefore presents itself to the intelligent and conscientious voter, who wishes to discharge his duty to his country, to which of these two parties he shall in the impending election give his support. Nor can the true patriot of legal age turn aside from this duty, as one not incumbent upon him, leaving it to others whose more immediate business he may suppose it to be. In a Republic the responsibility as well as the power rests solely with the people. Each citizen possesses an inalienable share of the supreme power, and is answerable in his proportion for the wise exercise of

that power. The sum of individual votes it is which decides and shapes the Government. It is not incumbent upon every citizen to be a politician, but the intelligent exercise of his franchise is his inevasible duty. He is born to a joint tenancy with his fellow-citizens in the National Sovereignty, and he may not repudiate the heritage. If noblesse oblige, not less obligatory is Sovereignty.

It is no part of our present purpose to weigh the relative merits of the respective candidates of the two parties individually. We are to consider only what are the issues which the contending parties present in the coming election to the decision of the nation. The youngest voter is aware that to the names by which the two great parties are known no distinctive signification now attaches. Democracy, the school-boy can tell us, means the power of the people. At periods of history, and in countries where

this power had previously not existed, and when it asserted itself was resisted, this name had a real significance, designating the principle of government by the people, as distinguished from the government by one Sovereign-Monarchy, or from the rule of the few-Oligarchy. At the present day, in the United States, government by the people is indisputably established, and the name Democratic, as the designation of a party, has here no longer a living significance. The party which bears it presents to-day to the country no more advanced theory of popular government than its adversary. Nor has the name Republican as applied to any one party in this country any inherent meaning. We are and always have been a Republic. Neither party, therefore, can claim more than the other to represent Democracy or Republicanism in the original sense of these terms. What then does distinguish these parties, and what

principles do they to-day respectively rep

resent?

When the absorbing interest which now attends the selection of the standard-bearer of each party shall have subsided, and the combatants on either side shall enter the lists for the contest, we recommend to our young readers then to keep their ears well open, and with impartial mind listen to the creeds of the two contending forces as they shall be recited by their appointed heralds. So far as is yet apparent, there is no new principle or measure of primary importance which either party is likely to inscribe upon its banner. If such shall be the

case, we have to revert to what have been the questions which have divided them in the recent past. In the absence of any express and emphatic declaration to the contrary, it is to be presumed that each party still asserts and maintains the principles of which it lately has been the

champion. We have, therefore, next to inquire what part these parties have played in our recent history, what each has advocated, and what it has achieved. For this purpose it cannot be too strongly urged upon the civic neophyte to study diligently the history of his country during the period especially that these two parties have confronted each other. The Democratic party dates back to a birth as early, probably, as that of the most venerable of its votaries, who shall this year record his fidelity to it. The present Republican party first sprung into full national existence in the years which witnessed the birth of the young generation, whose suffrages it now for the first time invites. Like themselves it has, in length of years, but just attained its majority. But to understand the actual history of its brief life, the student must carry his retrospect yet a little further back, must trace the causes which call