subordinate patronage on the same principle on which the administration itself acts. With such a policy the disturbing causes will be reduced to a minimum and the party will move on in general unity and strongly ascendant. I will venture what character I have for political judgment that no perceptible obstacle to this result would be found in the selection of Gen. Dix for the Cabinet. "There is another consideration in respect to that gentleman. He is a model of a Cabinet officer. Able, accomplished, and judicious, capable of doing a given quantity of work in a specified time, not having made himself or been made a candidate for the Presidency, he will serve the administration faithfully, and without aiming to control or manage it to personal ends; and being in nobody's way for the succession, with no affiliations formed to secure it to him, not looked to with any such view by those who present his name, he will draw on the administration no jealousies on that score from those who fear passive not less than active rivals, and will not believe that Presidential ambition, once entertained, can ever be practically relinquished. "To the force of all these considerations is opposed nothing but an alleged repugnance of the South or portions of it to Genl. Dix's appointment arising from his position in 1848. I do not suppose Genl. Pierce will be disposed to, or can listen to, an objection of this nature, and I think it will be found to have as little real existence as it has cogency. Mr. Dickinson's friends thought before the last convention that they should ruin Gov. Marcy by charging him with having allied with the Barnburners; but it rather proved an element of strength, and the votes he received were, notwithstanding, from the extreme South. Our friends there, as elsewhere, wanted a candidate who could win. Every man of sense, then, must see now that if the party would maintain itself, it must do so by the same policy by which it regained the ascendency. The real difficulty in respect to the South will be in composing their own dissensions, in which all sides there will feel infinitely stronger interest than in any New York question. Such an objection to Genl. Dix may be entertained by bigotry or the narrowness of views of some, or more likely it may be the pretence of men dissatisfied on grounds interesting them personally. If this pretence be wanting to such, others equally available will be found.