from alighting on fitter shoulders--which it is certain that Mr. D. confidentially calculated the convention would find, after trying Cass' awhile, to be of exactly his own management. "Looking to this State, therefore, I think the appointment of Genl. Dix would be the most wise, expedient, and prudent, with his moderation and conciliatory conduct always, and conciliatory disposition, it will prove generally satisfactory. Not that all can be pleased. Still less that a few impracticables in this city will be--who never have been for twenty years, when the party was strong and prosperous--I mean the leading spirits. Their idea of building up the party has been to exclude from it a majority as Barnburners, and the most of the Hunkers as having traitorous sympathies and affiliations with the Barnburners; and, incapable of more than one idea at a time, they have continued faithful to this, until they have pretty much exhausted the credit they acquired in 1848 with the masses of those who voted for Gen. Cass; and have lost their influence in the organization of the party even in this city, while their crotchets are not and have not been shared in by a tenth of those who were nominally classified with them. They may be safely disregarded. There will be no local dissatisfaction in this city arising from appointments, if those which are of a local nature be judiciously made. The truth is the divisions and factions which appear on the surface of our city politics are pretty much confined to the petty leaders, and excite attention or interest in but a very small portion of the masses. They are generated by the very large number of offices, contracts, and other objects of cupidity, municipal, State, and national, which are concentrated here, and perhaps in some degree by the stirring and heterogeneous character of our population. They always exist, and have little to do with any settled general classification. Their effect is to render opinion and individual character less influential than in the more natural and sound condition of the rural districts, and to make the organization of the party, always scrambled for to promote personal ends, a much less true index of the real sentiments of the party. So far as the relations of the administration with the party in this city are to be effected at all by its appointments, assuming them, of course, to be intrinsically proper and reputable, it would be incomparably more by the multitude of little ones than by the large. While the appointments here should be made with primary reference to the honest and efficient discharge of official duties, a judicious care should be had for the harmonizing and conciliating the entire party. The one or two which have extensive subordinate patronage should not be surrendered to the bigotry of clique or of individuals on the idea of a partition between factions, but should be entrusted to persons who have largeness of views, judgments, and local knowledge enough to administer the