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THE PRESIDENT AND THE DEMOCRACY. – A letter from Washington represents Mr. BUCHANAN as denouncing the Democratic Party in unmeasured terms. He accuses them of having deserted him and left him utterly without the means of carrying on the government. The reproach is not wholly undeserved. Judged by the standard of public duty the Democratic Party has not met the responsibility resting upon it. Being in absolute possession of the Government, it was bound to protect the public welfare: - and no consideration of party interest, still less any motive of factious discontent, could release it from this obligation.
Upon party grounds, however, the matter rests on a different footing. Mr. BUCHANAN must be aware that he has given his party every possible provocation for leaving him to his own resources. He has evinced, from the moment of his accession the most sovereign disregard of its principles, its traditions and its interests. He has insulted and estranged all its recognized leaders, turned its platform bottom upwards, and devoted himself to the task of building up a personal faction devoted to himself instead of the party. Such a course deserves but one reward and can have but one result. Any party will in self-defence punish such interested treachery, perpetrated by those whom it has raised to power. The misfortune is that this penalty should be imposed at the expense of the country. For the sake of reaching the President, the Democratic majority in Congress has exposed the whole country to the hazards of disgrace and the certainty of very great inconvenience. How these evils are to be averted remains to be seen.
