If it must be so, let parties and party men continue to quarrel with little or no regard to the public good. They may mystify themselves and others with disputations on political economy, proving the most opposite doctrines to their own satisfaction, and perhaps to the conviction of no one else on earth. They may deserve reprobation for their selfishness, their violence, their errors, or their wickedness. They may do our country much harm. They may retard its growth, destroy its harmony, impair its character, render its institutions unstable, pervert the public mind, and deprave the public morals. These are indeed evils, and sore evils, but the principle of life remains, and will yet struggle with assured success over these temporary maladies. Still we are great, glorious, united, and free, still we have a name that is revered abroad and loved at home--a name which is a tower of strength to us against foreign wrong and a bond of internal union and harmony, a name which no enemy pronounces but with respect, and which no citizen hears but with a throb of exultation. Still we have that blessed Constitution which, with all its pretended defects and all its alleged violations, has conferred more benefit on man than ever yet flowed from any other human institution--which has established justice, insured domestic tranquillity, provided for the common defense, promoted the general welfare, and which, under God, if we be true to ourselves, will insure the blessings of liberty to us and to our posterity. Surely such a country and such a Constitution have claims upon you, my friends, which cannot be disregarded. I entreat and adjure you, then, by all that is near and dear to you on earth, by all the obligations of patriotism, by the memory of your fathers who fell in the great and glorious struggle, for the sake of your sons whom you would not have to blush for your degeneracy, by all your proud recollections of the past and all your fond anticipations of the future renown of our nation, preserve that country, uphold that Constitution. Resolve that they shall not be lost while in your keeping, and may God Almighty strengthen you to fulfill that vow! [Illustration: GEORGE E. BADGER.] GEORGE E. BADGER. BY WM. A. GRAHAM. My acquaintance with Mr. Badger commenced in the latter part of the summer of 1825. He had already completed his service as a judge, which office he resigned at the close of the spring circuit of that year; had contested the palm of forensic eloquence and professional learning with Seawell and Gaston, with a wide increase of reputation, at the recent term of the Supreme Court, and was returned to the practice in Orange, where he had once resided, in generous competition with Murphy, Nash, Yancey, Mangum, Hawks, Haywood, and others--Mr. Ruffin, hitherto the leader at this bar, having been appointed his successor on the bench of the Superior Court.