behaviour under another. At low temperatures, especially, fractures of this sort occur continually in the case of rails and ties, and the first heavy frost of each winter is the most dangerous period of railway travel. Another element of danger is the tendency of iron to crystallize when placed in a position to receive a succession of shocks or jars. A bar of wrought iron, for instance, if freely suspended in the air and struck repeatedly with a hammer, becomes, through crystallization, of no greater tenacity than a bar of glass; and this process of degeneracy is cumulative, for the bar does not relapse into its previous state, but will carry over from period to period all the crystalline character it receives in each. The only remedy for this is to alloy iron with nickel, but as this is costly, it is never done. For this reason no iron edifice, whether a house or a bridge, can last for a very long period. The condition of an iron bridge after a hundred years of existence would be perilous in the extreme, while a stone bridge, if it be well constructed, will last a millennium, and be none the worse for wear.

THE political situation has very materially altered since the opening of the year, and the prospect of a feasible, if not of a laudable, solution of the entanglement before St. Valentine's day seems clear enough. That there has been no collision and no real danger of any, has not been owing to the good conduct of one section of the Democratic party: that which is led by Messrs. Knott and Watterson, of Kentucky. The latter gentleman has even threatened Congress with the presence of an armed mob from his own. State; while the former, forgetful of the numerous crabs he caught last summer, has been turning the House Committee on Privileges into a general investigating committee, with a view to hunting out all the scandals of the campaign. Investigation, thus far, has not helped the Democratic case. The despatches of the Republican National Committee to the disputed States have been unearthed, but they are as irreproachable as heart could desire. On the other hand, the discovery of a remittance of eight thousand dollars to Oregon by one of Mr. Tilden's most trusted political agents, and the confession of Mr. Cronin, the Democratic elector, that he received three thousand of it "for expenses," has not helped to increase the enthusiasm for the New York candidate.

Another of Mr. Knott's questionable proceedings was the preparation of a report on the rights of the House in the matter of count

ing the vote, evidently with a view to exerting pressure upon the more conservative Committee of Conference which had the matter under consideration. In this document it was claimed that the more numerous body was "at least the equal of the Senate" in this respect. We are not disposed to dispute the equal rights of the two bodies in the matter, as each has under the Constitution just no rights at all, except that of being present as witnesses. The Convention which framed the Constitution decided the question by passing a resolution directing the new Senate to elect a President to count the vote of the first election. And until the adoption of the famous Joint Rule at the close of the War, which was clearly an intrusion of Congress upon the sphere of the Executive, there was no act or resolution upon record which disputed the right of the Vice-President or his acting representative. And on the other side there stands the distinct and emphatic decision of Chancellor Kent, our very first of constitutional lawyers, that the Vice-President, and he alone, is the judge in all cases of dispute. If such powers inhere in the two Houses, then we might as well refer the election of the President to them in the first place; whereas, in the present status of our political methods, the election is by the votes of the States as such, and the constitution and laws of each State -not those of Congress-determine how it shall be cast, and how it shall be ascertained when cast.

For these reasons, and for those which we gave last month, we are unable to approve of the Compromise Bill reported by the Committee of Conference, and passed by Congress after a brief and hasty discussion of its merits. The new Returning Board, consisting one-third of Senators, one-third of Representatives, and one-third of Judges of the Supreme Court, will possess no powers under the Constitution to decide any cases of doubt or dispute. Its acts, if they have any validity, will derive it from their adoption by President Ferry as his own decisions. The creation of such a Board will be a precedent for future Congresses, but future Vice-Presidents may not be so ready to surrender their Constitutional powers and abandon their Constitutional responsibilities. So that unless the new measure is embodied in the Constitution itself, we are preparing for a dead-lock of the very worst sort, and at some date in the twentieth century the world may see two Presidents claiming the executive chair, the one sanctioned by the Constitution and its

highest interpreters, the other by the two Houses. And if the Constitution be amended so as to legalize this new tribunal, the effect will be to make the transfer of power from one party to another impossible except by a revolution, in case both the Senate and the out-going House are favorable to the administration.

Furthermore, this new tribunal is not an executive officer who has been scanning the political situation for months past, quietly collecting evidence, and gravely making up his mind as to what it will be just and wise for him to do in view of the difficulties of his position, and who will say his say and be done with it in ten minutes. It is a body selected from the partisans on both sides, which in its united capacity knows nothing of the points in dispute, and which has no evidence on the subject accessible to it, but such as has been collected for partisan purposes and with a partisan bias. It must go behind all reports, reopen all questions, re-begin heated and tiresome discussions, listen to partisan speeches, and thus work the country up to a degree of embittered excitement such as we have not yet experienced. And the whole of its operations will be in the sharpest contradiction to the theory of the Constitution as it stands-the theory that the election of the President is done by the votes of the States, and that when a State has voted and reported its vote in the form and through the officers prescribed by its own laws, no branch of the National Government has any right to review its action.

None of these considerations could be expected to have any weight with those who think that the one thing we need is a road out of the present entanglement. To use a phrase which is on everybody's lips, they were willing to "mortgage the future" for the sake of the present, and when that spirit is re-awakened in political circles, what is to be expected? We say re-awakened, for "mortgaging the future" was the very policy which carried the nation through compromise after compromise into the depths of a Civil War. The political leaders whom Harriet Martineau questioned during her visit to this country, and Henry Clay among the number, confessed that they were only mortgaging the future by their measures; that the conflict between slavery and freedom must come some day, and they were trying to stave off the evil day. Apres moi le Deluge, is but the final outcome of that line of policy.

The resistance offered by the minority in both houses of Congress to the passage of the bill was dignified, weighty, and unavail

ing. Never was a great measure carried in more hot haste, and never did one more depend upon the warmth of its first reception, and the outside urgency of those who were actuated by motives which had nothing to do with the merits of the scheme. The founders of the Government borrowed from Scotch ecclesiastical law a method of constitutional amendment which is of all others the most certain to secure time for discussion and deliberation-that of requiring that amendments to our fundamental law shall pass the State Legislatures as well as Congress. But here is a measure to readjust the relations of the national Executive and the Legislature, and that by setting aside the ascertained meaning of the authors of the Constitution, which has been passed through Congress alone, and with a haste that would have been hardly decent had it been an appropriation bill to relieve a dire famine in some suffering district of our national territory. What really commends the plan to most of those who favor it is the uncertainty of result which induces each party to adopt it in hope that the fifth judge will favor its own claims. This would equally commend the simpler and more primitive method of "pitch and toss." And whatever might be said of the want of dignity in this or any method of casting lots, it has high precedents on its side. It once gave Pennsylvania a bishop.

THE most cheering sign of the times is the conservative position taken by the Southern leaders. They have inaugurated the Democratic Governors in both South Carolina and Louisiana, and in New Orleans have got possession of the State edifices, by their armed constabulary. But they are determined to submit to the United States authorities, if the latter choose to exert force. Governor Hampton sends the statement of his case in duplicate to Governor Hayes and Governor Tilden. Ben Hill of Georgia, and other Southern whigs, have evidently made up their minds that the day for "fire-eating” is past, and that they are not again to be surprised into the follies of 1860. A former Confederate general in Missouri announces that if there is to be any more fighting, he is ready, but he will be on the other side this time. This is all the more admirable, because exactly the same false signals are now held out to them. The business community in our Northern cities go on sending up petitions based on the old assumption that the business interests of the community are paramount to all

others, and that the country will be glad to accept any solution, or submit to any concessions, that will allow money-making to go

And the Northern and Border Democrats are mouthing the old threats with as much unction as if they had never said all that before, and had not slunk off the field when it came to blows. Kentucky, especially, seems to be disputing with Indiana for the honor of the tallest talk both in and out of Congress, in a way which recalls one of President Lincoln's little stories. During the war, when that brave Commonwealth, which held with the hare and hunted with the hounds, was doing its utmost to embarrass the Government, he said Kentucky reminded him of the old colored woman's child who escaped the small-pox when his brothers and sisters caught it. His mother used to say she "jest wished he had cotched it like the rest, for he was so sassy ever since, there was no livin' with him.”

THE apathy of the South, in view of all this, shows that they have learned something from their experiences in the war. But it would be very unsafe to infer that they are indifferent to the result of the election, or that Mr. Tilden's elevation to the Presidency would not be the occasion of such legislation as would-to use their own euphemism—"take the negro out of politics." The Constitution contains no provisions which forbid an educational or property qualification, or a heavy poll-tax like that of Georgia, or the disfranchisement, as in Virginia, of persons convicted of any crime, however small; and by these means all but a small per centage of the colored voters would be disfranchised without depriving the States of the additional representation secured them by the emancipation of their slaves. The next step will be a large extension of the vagrant laws, such as sending every negro laborer to work on the roads or in the prisons of the State, unless he make a contract to labor for six months within two weeks after the expiration of his previous contract. We are not drawing upon imagination for these details of the method by which emancipation may be undone in substance without touching its form. These are the things which Southern legislatures did enact, in the Johnsonian era between the war and their reconstruction. It is true that in all the doubtful States, the white politicians are profuse in their promises to respect the rights of the negro. But that sort of conversion, which is rooted in fear and not in love, is, as the theologians tell us, of all conversions the least lasting.