intellect only by a process of reasoning. What St. Thomas really does, is to clear up and render this judgment distinct by what he calls demonstration. The question as to the origin of the judgment of causality, the real basis of all demonstration, was not debated in his time. He finds the mind in possession of it, and uses it without further question. But if he had been asked its origin, it is not to be believed that he would have said we obtain it from demonstration. Then again, though he appears to start from the sensible element, his real process is not to infer the ideal or noetic element from it, but to disengage it, and to show that it is the Divine judgment. To this process well understood there is nothing to object, and it is the very process we are ourselves obliged to follow in order to show that our principium is really the principle of things, that is to say, is really God by his act creating the universe. The Thomist seems to us to confound the method it is necessary to follow in teaching with the method the mind follows in its own intellectual life. Whoever teaches philosophy must follow his method, but it will not do to confound it with the method of that which the teacher has to explain and systematize.

ART. III. The Know-Nothing Platform.

THE article in our last Review, on A Know-Nothing Legislature, was written and in type before the meeting of the delegates of the Know-Nothing party in their National Council in Philadelphia, and consequently before we were aware of the apparent split in the secret order on the question of slavery. Had we foreseen that the order would agree to play the game of being pro-slavery at the South and anti-slavery at the North, we should have expressed ourselves less decidedly as to its failure as a political party in the country. We look upon the protest and apparent separation of the Northern Know-Nothings as a mere ruse, designed solely to secure sectional votes. We do not believe that there is any real division in the order, or that there has been any real modification of its principles, and

perhaps it has never been more formidable than at the present moment.

Massachusetts had rendered herself so odious to the South by her Know-Nothing legislation, especially on the slavery question, that it was idle for the party to go into the canvass in any Southern or Southwestern State without having ostensibly disowned all fellowship with her. The Council felt it necessary, to enable the party to assume a national character in some States and a sectional character in others. Hence we regard the protest and withdrawal of the Northern members as mutually concerted, and done to enable the order to have some chance of securing the votes of the Southern and National Whigs. But there is, in our opinion, no real breach between the two sections of the organization. The Northern Anti-Nebraska Know-Nothings and the Southern and Western Nebraska Know-Nothings stand, we have no doubt, equally well in the order; and if the order puts up a national ticket, both will be found voting in loving harmony for the same candidates, whether those candidates are Nebraska or Anti-Nebraska. We therefore believe our Massachusetts Know-Nothings are in as good standing in the order as any others. Of course, this is only an opinion; but we think the public will by no means find it an idle opinion.

The Know-Nothing party originated we know not when, where, or by whom, but we make little doubt that its organization has been favored and supported principally by that section of the Whig party, who, after their terrible defeat in the election of General Pierce, despaired of ever attaining again to power under their own name and organization. The Democratic party was so strong at the moment of the election, that its division or the disaffection of a large portion of its members, when the distribution of offices came, might be reasonably expected. The master-stroke of policy, then, would be to seize upon an organization that would secure the support of the main body of the defeated Whigs and Free-Soilers, and attract the co-operation of disaffected Democrats. Out of these three elements it would not be unreasonable to hope for the forming of a party strong enough to elect the next President. Such was the calculation. Fortune seemed to favor the conspirators. The disaffection in the Democratic

ranks was even greater in several leading States than could have reasonably been counted on, and the passage of the Nebraska Bill and the repeal of that absurdity called "the Missouri Compromise," came most opportunely to infuse new life and energy into the Free-Soil party, and to draw into a sympathy with them a large number of Northern Whigs who had hitherto stood up manfully in support of the Constitution and the Union. So great was the real or affected wrath of our Boston Whigs, of those even who had sustained Mr. Webster in his national policy, and had some distant hopes of making Mr. Everett the Whig candidate for the Presidency in 1856, that they were at first indisposed to execute the Fugitive Slave Law in the case of Anthony Burns. For ourselves, though not opposed to the Nebraska Bill, and having always disapproved the Missouri Compromise, as unconstitutional and absurd, we were provoked at the introduction of the bill, because it seemed to us inopportune and uncalled for. Once introduced, of course, we must support it; but we believed it bad policy on the part of the friends of the administration to introduce it, and we think so still.

With the views of a large number of individual Whigs we have of late years had many sympathies; but we have never had any sympathy with the Whigs in their party action. They have since assuming the name of Whig, in 1832, seldom had any firm and fixed principles by which they seemed prepared to stand or to fall. They have, especially since 1838, as a party, seemed too fond of making up false issues, and availing themselves of every temporary and local excitement, and every temporary and local fanaticism, that promised to give them a temporary and local accession of numbers. The reason of this is not in their natural sympathy with these excitements and fanaticisms, but in the fact of their weakness as a national party. There is no use in denying or seeking to disguise the fact, that the Democratic party represents the national sentiment, and is, whenever that sentiment can fully express itself, the dominant party of the Union. It can never be defeated, save in certain localities, when the issue is fairly made up, and the people come to a direct vote between it and its opponents. It is the only party, when in place, strong enough to propose and carry its measures. Twice since 1840 the Whigs have been in place, and in neither

case have they been able to carry out their avowed policy; but in both they have been obliged to abandon their distinctive measures, and to adopt a policy, in the main, acceptable to their Democratic opponents. Hence the accession of the Whigs on a distinctive policy of their own, or by a firm and manly reliance on their own strength, is, whether desirable or not, out of the question, and they are obliged to remain in opposition, or resort to stratagem, to avail themselves of collateral issues and temporary expedients.

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Now this Know-Nothing order, whether it was conceived and brought forth by Whigs as such or not, and for our part we do not believe that it was, seemed admirably adapted to their purpose; and when its managers proposed it to the Whig members of the last Congress, all but two or three of them, if our information be correct, agreed to adopt it. It professed to be wholly independent of all existing party organizations, and therefore it appealed directly to the members of those party organizations which it was felt were effete, or too feeble to attain to power in their own name, and to a considerable number of persons who were dissatisfied with all the old parties, and desirous of seeing a new party arise from their ashes. The number of these last was much larger and more important, two or three years ago, than is commonly supposed. The Whigs had no well-settled policy, and they had proved themselves unable to administer the government to the satisfaction of the country. The FreeSoilers were fanatics, and hostile to the Union, and the Democrats were tinctured with fillibusterism, and tending, to ultraism under the seductive name of progressive democracy with fearful rapidity, and seemed on the point of abandoning for ever the American for the European democracy, that is, American Constitutionalism for French Jacobinism. We ourselves should have been most happy to have seen a new party springing up, that should have been neither Whig nor Democratic, but which should combine the conservative elements of both parties. Such a party seemed to us at one moment not wholly impossible, and if it could have been formed on truly American principles, it would, though not immediately, but in time, have attained to power; and even before doing so, it would have exerted a wholesome restraining influence upon the action

of whatever party might be in place. To persons desirous of a truly conservative party, that is, conservative in a good, not a bad sense, the Know-Nothings pretended to be such a party, although we never for a moment believed them. Being a secret order, and their real principles, if they had any, being unknown, except to the managers, they could profess anything according to the predilections of the persons they addressed, provided those persons were non-Catholics. With men of a conservative tendency, they were conservative; with radicals, they were radicals; with Fillibusters, they were Fillibusters; with Free-Soilers, they were antislavery; with the friends and supporters of the compromises of the Constitution, they were organized for the purpose of putting down the Free-Soilers, and protecting the Union.

But they must, in order to be able to draw largely from the Democratic ranks, appeal to other sentiments. They therefore professed strong American and anti-foreign sympathies, which would attract what remained of the old "Native American" party, and also strong Protestant, anti-Catholic sentiments, which would enlist the Evangelical and No-Popery party of the country. It was from their opposition to foreign residents and naturalized citizens and their strong appeals to Native American prejudices, and their opposition to the Catholic Church and strong appeals to Protestant fanaticism, that they hoped to enlist under their banner a sufficient number of the Democratic party to secure them, with the despairing Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and the no-party men, a majority of voters in a majority of the States and in the Union. The Native American and anti-foreign appeals were intended principally for the South, and the anti-Catholic and Protestant appeals principally for the North. These appeals, with the hope of office held out to a large class of men who under any other organization knew they had and could have no chance of attaining to place, it was thought, not wholly without reason, would suffice to give them the political power of the country.

Such are the Know-Nothings and their hopes regarded as a political party. While we are writing, important elections are taking place in several States at the South and Southwest, the result of which has not reached us, but which will most likely prove to be of a mixed character.