UNITED STATES. THE FUTURE PRESIDENT.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 766, 4 December 1852, Page 4

UNITED STATES. THE FUTURE PRESIDENT.

(From the Illustrated London News, July 10.] General Pierce is in the forty-sjxth year' of liis age. He has been Speaker of the House of Representatives of New Hampshire, a member of its Senate, a representative to congress, and a member of the United States' Senate. He was President of the Convention which revised the New Hampshire Constitution, and his title of " General" was won by bis service in the Mexican war. He is a lawyer of ability, and a gentleman of accomplished manners. The instant he was named he received almost the unanimous support of the Convention, 282 out of 288 votes, and seems likely to be successful against his competitor. General Scott is only a soldier who has gained laurels ia Mexico. On the first ballot he received only 131 votes, while Mr. Fillmore received 133, and Mr. Webster 29 ; and the majority of the whole being required, it was not till the fifty-third ballot that Genera! Scott had the requisite number : he*bad then 158, Mr. Fillmore 113, and Mr. Webster 21. The Whig partyis, therefore, much divided, and will probably be defeated. In 1849 the Whig' parly was successful, in the person of General Zachary Taylor, who died in July, ISSO, and left no successor in his party of equal popularity. Piercej though he belongs to a northern State, is opposed to the tariff. New Hampshire is Tiot a manufacturing State, and its interests are adverse to Protection. General Taylor was favourable to Protection, though in a moderate form, from being connected with Louisiana. Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, even more decidedly than General Scott, favour Prolection ; and the different mode of coming to a decision of the two Conventions foreshadow the complete defeat of that principle. It will be time enough to speculate on the consequences when the question of the Presidency is decided ; but they are likely to be very favourable to the extension of trade, and not more'advantageous to England than America. The peace and quietness with which the elections are all completed in the States, though so much is •written and said about them, demand a further observation* Some persons attribute all the success of the States, the good order which prevails, the general prosperity, &c, to the great abundance of laud at the command of the people. But for years past the policy of our Government in relation to our own colonies has been very much influenced by Mr. Wakefield's theory, that abundance of land is a source of barbarousness, arid it has actually made land dear or scarce in the colonies, in order to to confine and condense the population. It is quite certain too, that many of the States of Europe are not so densely peopled at Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is tiouhtful, therefore, whether the prosperity of the United States, and the good order of their people, mingled with strangers from all parts of the world, «*a^e the consequences merely of land .being abundant. ' Though material causes, of which an abundance or .scarcity of land is one, have a great influence ov^r the character and conduct of men, yet. moral causes — as we learn from the examples of the Swiss r the Dutch, and the English, who achieved greatness in spite, or perhaps in consequence, -of comparatively contracted limits — are at least equally powerful in determining the weal or woe of mankind. Many parts of Russia, Poland, . Austria,. Hungary, Turkey, have yet room for many millions of human beings, and it is not, therefore, fhe command of an abundance of land, but the government, and qualities of the Americans, which e.isure their prosperity. While the people of most of the countries of Europe go to loggerheads when there is any kind of difference of opinion among st them, and could not for ages, and cannot now, i^lect a Bishop or a Burgomaster, a Landaraann, or a King, a parish beadle or a member of Parliament, without contests and conflicts, wasting money and time, generating disturbances, and breaking heads or shedding blood, the Americans, by so.vac simple and reasonable method — caucus, log-rolling, convention — mauage quietly to bricg all their disputes to the decisioa of a numerical test. For upwards of seventy years, during most c-f which civilised states of Europe have been corrvulsed with contests, insurrections; revolutions, and wars — beiug mined by police, soldiers, and restrictions to prevent mischief when not engaged ia bloody battle — the Americans have lived in almost perfect peace, and have continually elected" throughout their States an immense mass of officials, from a hall porter to the President, without more disturbance than is occasioned in Europe by changing the.quarters of a regiment. The explanation of the phenomenon seems to lie in the common but general fact, that knowledge gives skill. The youngest of nations, the United States, profit by the expprience of their predecessors ; and as they rienefit by alt the admirable ..machinery of old Europe, for cultivating the soil and manufacturing cloth, besides inventing more new and admirable machinery of their own than is possessed by any other nation except the English, so they benefit by using the best machinery of Government previously known and in use in Europe, while they have improved it by still better machinery of their own. They are simply more - skilled in the ait of government, as they are more skilled in the management of steam-boats and telegraphs, than most of the people of Europe.