"The affairs of our State demand no less our attention. There is now an unusually favorable opportunity for the initiation of political changes of great importance, which cannot fail to be acceptable to all classes of people. Of these, restricted sessions of the legislature, and heavy retrenchment in State expenditures, are of lasting importance. Our people, constantly engaged in pursuits of commerce, manufactures, mechanic arts, and agriculture, have a right to demand of the Government that it shall meet, without evasion, the necessities of the time, and enable them, without following the constant changes of partisanship, to hold their servants to an immediate and direct responsibility." It is not easy to say how closely Mr. Banks has been connected with Americanism in Massachusetts. It is very certain that he _used_ Americanism, and that he guided it, but to what extent he has adopted, at any time, its doctrines, we cannot say. It has been said that Mr. Banks was opposed to the "Two Years' Amendment" recently adopted by the voters of Massachusetts, but he failed to show his hand upon it one way or the other. The Americans, we believe, claim that Mr. Banks is one of them in principle, but upon what grounds we know not. Mr. Banks, though formerly a Democrat, is understood to be in favor of a moderately protective tariff. He is, as the extracts we have quoted show, decidedly opposed to the extension of slavery, but does not occupy, as an opponent of slavery, such advanced ground as that upon which Mr. Seward stands. He is opposed to agitation upon the slavery question, except in self-defence, while Mr. Seward is for battle, open and decided, but constitutional, till slavery is driven from the continent. JOSEPH LANE. Gen. Lane occupies a somewhat prominent position before the country in reference to the Presidency. Not because he professes to be a leading statesman of the country, for it is but recently that he has become a national legislator, or participated, to any great extent, in national politics. But possibly for this very reason many eyes are turned toward him as a fit subject for the suffrages of the Charleston convention. Joseph Lane is a native of North Carolina, and was born December 14, 1801. In 1804 his father removed his family to Kentucky, and in 1816 young Joseph crossed the Ohio, and entered a store in Warwick County, Indiana. What his opportunities were, in early life, for education, we do not learn, but that they were slight cannot be doubted--a common school education being all that was within his reach. The rest he procured for himself in the wide school of the world.