Mr. POLK is the ' President of the United States of
America. Mr. Pout! who is he ? In sooth, nobody seems to know much about him. His Christian name is "JAMES K." ; but our re- searches do not solve the mystery of the initial. The most distinct biographical fact known respecting the illustrious gentleman is, that , he isfortrnine ye,ars of age ; which is no doubt a merit as far as it - goes, for it is a very discreet mill proper and still active age. It is -also, known of Mr. POLK that he is of a " Democratic " turn of ELANSEIT EDITION.3 policy ; that is, according to the present meaning of the'te-riii, he is in favour of annexing Texas to the Union, against a central bank, against distribution of surplus Federal revenue to the several States, and for a moderate tariff. As the moderate tariff would be agree- able to England, the satisfaction on that score may be set off against chagrin at the disposition to annex Texas. But, as English Con- servatives have exclaimed, " Thank God ! there is a House of Lords," so American Whigs cry, "Thank God ! there is a Senate : for two years at least the Senate will be Whig, and neither tariff nor annexation can be more than a fruitless aspiration of Mr. POLK'S brain. In two years, the agitation for the next Presidential election will begin, and practical measures are likely to be interrupted. So both satisfac- tion and dissatisfaction at Mr. Pomes elevation are theoretical, and we are left merely to wonder why an unknown gentleman has been so emphatically preferred to Hestay CLAY, facile princeps among American statesmen. History perhaps can tell us better than the electors themselves could, why a mere tool of popular will has been preferred to a statesman with will and views of his own. The event has suggested the remark, that the working of the Republican con- stitution comes round to the same point as Monarchy in taking it for granted that the chief magistrate may be a nobody. It may be observed, however, that the American " nobody " is only taken on a four-years lease, not for life, with entailed succession to boot; and that the chief magistrate there is really of less importance, really more like a public servant or clerk, than the European species Monarch. And it is a striking trait of the popular American cha- racter, daily becoming more apparent, to care little about great prin- ciples, little about the honour and dignity of a thing for theic own sakes, but all for some immediate purpose ; which is often no better than to spite some reasonable expectation—because they are the freest nation on the earth, and accountable to none. Mystics are content to require no such sublunary reasons for the choice, but to regard it merely as the Transatlantic form of an endemic insanity; for as the Polhamania has possessed all Europe, so is the Polk a mania with the Americans.
