"I ought perhaps to add a matter of information without going into discussion of political antecedents that in our great financial controversy from 1836-7 this gentleman was with the Whigs, and was not again visible in our ranks until 1844. "Inferior to either of the other gentlemen mentioned in general abilities and acquirements, and to either of them, except Mr. O'Conor, as a politician--and not strong with his State in any of his political antecedents--Mr. Dickinson has brought himself into his present unfortunate relations with a great majority of the party here by the extreme positions he has occupied on questions which have divided the State, and still more by the fatuity with which he has followed Judge Beardsley and Mr. Croswell in a policy which must have been fatal to the party if it had not sooner been fatal to its advocate. I mean the policy of resisting every attempt at an honorable or practicable union of the Democracy of the State--on the chance that, while the prominent men of the section, which formed a majority of the whole and had many sympathizers from the rank and file of that section, could be made through the influence of association with the party in other States; and that, while the Democracy of the Union should take the risks of the experiment, those who got it up would, at least, own the wreck. Fairer and wiser men saw that such an experiment in a party which rarely commands a majority exceeding two or three per cent. of the aggregate vote, even if more successful than could be reasonably hoped for, could have no result but to leave New York as thoroughly federalized as Massachusetts or Vermont for a generation to come. But the folly of the scheme was no less in its personal aspects. It mistook the sentiments as it underrated the sense of the masses of the party. They, as everybody ought to have seen, were in favor of a reunion on equal and honorable terms. And the attempt to resist it--which, if openly made, would have been generally rejected--was sufficiently perceived to break the hold of its authors upon the masses of their own section, who, although sometimes in a collateral question where old associations or prejudices could be appealed to showing a large minority have been drifting from these gentlemen ever since, and many of them resuming relations with the radicals with whom they formerly acted. "Gov. Marcy and Genl. Dix both possess the important requisite of being of the union Democracy of the State, and are both capable of fulfilling the duties of a Cabinet station with signal ability and distinction. I express my judgment between these gentlemen, not without regret arising from kindly personal disposition towards the one against whom that judgment, under all the circumstances, must be. But I shall state it frankly, and briefly some of the reasons on which it is founded.