King Caucus is a great monarch, however; it would be a mistake to despise him, and conventions are dear to the American people--at least it would seem so, to judge from their number. Since I have been in America there have been sitting, besides doubtless a hundred others, the names of which I have not noticed, the Philadelphia “Copper Johnson Wigwam,” or assembly of the Presidential party (of which the Radicals say that it is but “the Copperhead organization with a fresh snout”), a dentists’ convention, a phrenological convention, a pomological congress, a school-teachers’ convention, a Fenian convention, an eight-hour convention, an insurance companies’ convention, and a loyal soldiers’ convention. One is tempted to think of the assemblies of ’48 in Paris, and of the caricatures representing the young bloods of the Paris Jockey Club being addressed by their President as “Citoyens Vicomtes,” whereas, when the _café_ waiters met in their congress, it was “Messieurs les Garçons-limonadiers.” The pomological convention was an extremely jovial one, all the horticulturists being whisky-growers themselves, and having a proper wish to compare their own with their neighbors’ “Bourbon” or “old Rye.” Caucuses (or cauci: which is it?) of this kind suggest a derivation of this name for what many consider a low American proceeding, from an equally low Latin word of similar sound and spelling. In spite of the phrase “a dry caucus” being not unknown in the temperance State of Maine, many might be inclined to think that caucuses, if not exactly vessels of grace, were decidedly “drinking vessels;” but Americans tell you that the word is derived from the phrase a “caulker‘s meeting,” caulkers being peculiarly given to noise. The cry against conventions is only a branch of that against “politicians,” which is continually being raised by the adherents of the side which happens at the moment to be the weaker, and which evidently helps to create the evils against which its authors are protesting. It is now the New York Democrats who tell such stories as that of the Columbia District census-taker going to the Washington house of a wealthy Boston man to find out his religious tenets. The door was opened by a black boy, to whom the white man began: “What‘s your name?” “Sambo, sah, am my Christian name.” “Wall, Sambo, is your _master_ a Christian?” To which Sambo‘s indignant answer was: “No, sah! Mass member ob Congress, sah!” When the Democrats were in power, it was the Republicans of Boston and the Cambridge professors who threw out sly hints, and violent invectives too, against the whole tribe of “politicians.” Such unreasoning outcries are to be met only by bare facts; but were a jury of readers of the debates in Parliament and in Congress to be impaneled to decide whether political immorality were not more rife in England than in America, I should, for my part, look forward with anxiety to the result.