With power equally distributed among the nations of Europe, there would be no cause for war. Nicholas thinks he can resist all Europe in arms: hence the present war. What mainly preserves the union of the States is the equality of representation of States in the American Senate, through which the reserved rights of the States are chiefly protected. And what will preserve the city of New York from conflagration, and best protect the ballot-box, and promote the best interests of the city, will be for the press to be far less grasping in its desires for universal power, through its advocation of, and its subsequent intimate connection with, the leading officers of dangerous political organizations, which must ultimately result in their absorption of the right of suffrage, and perhaps in the destruction of the city itself. Let the press and the public organizations studiously move in their respective spheres, like the States and the General Government,—a serious collision, or too friendly intimacy, being equally fatal to both, and to all concerned. The Press has power enough, and quite as much as the people can safely allow them. The public corporations have more power than is consistent with the public safety, and the purity and exercise of the elective franchise. But I repeat, that with a police department, and paid fire department, and other public corporations, and the press, all united in a specified object, God have mercy on the city of New York. Farewell, then, to the right of suffrage in this city. The paid firemen and the paid policemen, openly or tacitly sustained by the press, would utterly block up and control the passages leading to the ballot-boxes, permitting (as many of the police do now) only those to vote who could give the countersign. This fearful consolidation of power in the first American city might lead to the most deplorable results to the whole country. We have not existed eighty years as a Republic, which is a very brief period in the silent and trackless footsteps of centuries. The American eagle might fall to-morrow from his projecting cliff, never to rise. Rome ruled, and finally destroyed the Roman Empire. So with Athens and Alexandria, and other ancient cities. Paris, through political organizations, rules France. These associations, controlled by a bold, reckless, and accomplished leader, can make France a republic to-day, and a despotism to-morrow. London, through her public corporations, which were gradually stolen from the people, controls the British empire, on whose vast possessions the sun never sets. And why should not New York, with similar organizations, and controlled by a crafty, irresponsible, unscrupulous, and unbridled press, ultimately reduce the Whole country to despotism and degrading vassalage? Some of our leading and most honorable statesmen will tell you that the city of New York controls the national conventions of either party, and