WHAT is to become of the poor? It is a question to be asked with fear and trembling. It is a question which will hardly be answered in the thundering din of revolution and despotism that rolls over our land. The Abolition party have every motive, not only of self-protection, but of revenge, to keep back an answer. Nay, to keep the poor themselves from thinking of the future. If all the poor in the land were to sit down at one time, and think intelligently about this question for five hours, the next twenty-four hours would send up such a cry of alarm and of desperate resolve as would startle even the African stupidity that dreams of a long reign of security and triumph at Washington. To keep the poor from thinking, the Administration floods the country with all kinds of false statements, false logic, and false figures. At one time Mr. Seward, in some public speech, tells the people that the country was never so prosperous as now. Mr. Lincoln repeats the same in his messages, and Mr. Chase, although he knows himself to be sitting on a mine which may explode at any moment, puts on a happy face and repeats the shallow untruth. The source of a nation's prosperity is its productive industry. The Aboli. tion war has abstracted the industry of more than a million of men from the total of the nation's wealth. These have not only ceased to produce wealth, but they have become consumers and destroyers of wealth already produced. The war reduces the net annual pro

duction of the nation's wealth onethird; and this Mr. Seward, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Chase, and a host of Republican editors, equally truthful, or equally wise in finance, call "national prosperity." They point to the "good wages" which labor commands; but. the poor well know that to be a cheat. True, laborers are scarce, because their neighbors, friends, brothers, sons and fathers have been killed off in the Republican war, which creates a great demand for those who are yet alive; but the high wages do not long delude the poor man, for he finds them to be very low wages when he goes into the market to buy the wherewithal of life. He discovers that his new Abolition dollar buys less than thirty-seven per cent. of what old fashioned Democratic money used to. The following table shows the increase per centum on the chief articles of family consumption:

less than ten per cent., which leaves the working man poorer by thirty-five per cent. than before he had the happiness to enjoy Mr. Lincoln's "good times." And prices are still going up, while the value of the Republican currency is running down, with no prospect of better things as long as the dominant party is in power. Let the policy of this Administration continue three years longer, and the poor of this country will be brought to the very door of starvation.

But the question of the fate of those denominated poor does not touch the bulk of the people of the United States, except as a consideration of humanity, for the masses are neither poor nor rich. They occupy a middle space between poverty and riches; which is, however, replete with every thing that happiness requires, or that virtue can enjoy. Here, in this happy medium, are farmers, mechanics, artisans, and a majority of tradesmen. What is to become of them when we reap the final harvest of Mr. Lincoln's present sowing? On their shoulders must fall the weight of our national burdens. The same policy which is driving our poor to pauperism, is driving this class into poverty. We have shown in another place in this number of THE OLD GUARD, that the entire surplus wealth of the country will fall far short of the annual interest on Mr. Lincoln's debt. The people are driven into a corner where they can neither pay it without ruin, nor get rid of it without ruin. Like Dr. Young's vision of The Last Judgment

"Which way they turn is death !” The great, and, we fear, the incurable evil which Mr. Lincoln's Administration will bring upon our country is

the struggle of rich and poor, which has reduced the masses to poverty and suffering in every country of the Old World. On the surface of the present hour, in the tone of the papers of the party in power, in the sudden springing into existence of a numerous class, rolling in enormous wealth, we see the signs which have marked the fate of the many in Europe. Already the organs of the Administration begin to discuss the necessity of restricting the franchise by partisan and property qualifications. The rich are gradually sloughing off into the slough of the Abolition despotism, and assuming an attitude which, whether meant or not, is one of political and social antagonism to the non-wealthy classes. This antagonism is already fairly launched, and if the masses allow the political power of the country to pass from their control, a species of serfdom must be the inevitable result of their weakness and irresolution. Wisdom dictates that they immediately move to provide for the future. The debt that is intended to enslave them is already accomplished. The money is spent. It is wasted forever. The mischief is done. No sponge applied to the register of profligacy will cancel the evil effects. Regrets are useless. Repentance, the "second sober thought," is of no avail. But it is not yet too late for the non-wealthy classes to combine and use their political power

which, if they will bravely assert it, is still in their hands-to compel the rich to bear most of the burden. This will be no injustice to the rich. They have not only administered to the cause of, but they have been made rich by the war. Why should not the expenses come out of their ill-gotten

If such a ratio of taxation of riches were agreed upon, an increased per cent. would justly be added to all property proved to have been amassed since the war began.

To this scheme the rich will say that it compels men of great fortune to devote a large share of their income to the Government; and the poor will reply, "well, is that any harder than for the poor to be compelled to devote all their earnings to the Government, except what is necessary to barely keep life in their bodics? You men of banks, of ships, of railroads, of fortune, contractors, have increased your riches by millions out of the war, and it is but just that you should bear the expense of it." These may be ugly words to the ears of the rich, but who will say that they are not just? And since the whole drift of legislation is, under the the party in power, designed to strip the poor of all means of redress, who will attempt to argue that it is not fair and just for them to rush to the

polls at the very next election, whe ther State or national, and place in power their own representatives-men of intelligence and virtue from their own ranks-who will throw the bur dens of the country on shoulders where they belong. Governments, when just, are designed for the protection of the people; the masses of these are not wealthy; the few only are rich, and whenever the tendency of legislation is discovered to be for the sole benefit of this small exclusive class, it is time for the many to use the just powers in their hands for the protection of themselves and their country. This mighty power of the many should be exerted in no spirit of reckless intolerance or injustice to the rights of the few. Let all rights be sacred; but let liberty and justice be sacred. Since the world. began, despotism never made such strides, in a free country, as it has in the United States, from the elevation of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. Never before did wealth so suddenly and

so malignantly assail the non-wealthy people, with all sorts of schemes for their political and social enthrallment. If the rich will persist in pressing

these schemes, let the people throw back the glove, and meet then at the polls for one conclusive trial of strength.

We present our readers this month an admirably engraved likeness of exGov. Thomas H. Seymour, of Connecticut. Mr. Seymour has been long and favorably known in public life as an unflinching and unswerving Democrat of the States Rights school. He was first elected to the Connecticut Legislature in 1835, and to Congress in 1843. In 1847, when the Mexican war broke out, he joined the Ninth, or New England Regiment, and was elevated to the post of Major. Upon the death of Colonel Ransom, who was killed at Chepultepec, he took command of the Regiment, leading it under a severe fire over the walls of the fort, and with his own sword cut the halyards of the Mexican flag, which fell at his feet. He bore an honorable and distinguished part in all the battles from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, and the services of Col. Seymour are alluded to by General Scott, in his reports, in highly complimentary terms. After the war, he was three times elected Governor of Connecticut, and in 1853, was appointed by President Pierce Minister to Russia, where he represented the Government with credit to himself and the country. He returned in 1859, since which time he has held no official position, except,

upon the urgent solicitation of friends, accepting a place, in 1861, in the Connecticut Legislature. He ran for Governor in 1863, and was defeated, as all our readers well know, by the unscrupulous use of soldiers' votes by the present Administration. What recommends Colonel Seymour now to the attention of the public, however, is not his past history so much as his present position upon the civil war in which the country is involved. From the very first he has been among those who believed that it was provoked and gotten up by the Abolitionists to overthrow, and not to save the Govern ment, as it was instituted by Washington and Madison, and among the very few public men of the day, Col. Seymour can congratulate himself that he has never given one particle of aid or encouragement to this Abolition insurrection against the Constitution. When others hesitated, he did not. He denounced it in the Connecticut Legislature, in 1861, and his opponents vented their impotent rage by removing his portrait from the State Capitol ! In 1862 his name was used at a War

Meeting in Hartford. He promptly declared, in a public letter that "it was used without his knowledge or consent," and that "the monstroug

"fallacy of the present day, that the "Union can be re-established by des"troying any part of the South, is one "which will perish with the shells that "are thrown into its defenceless cities, "and leave the condition of the coun

try, after its treasures are exhaust

ed, and its brave men on both sides "consigned to hospitals and graves, "a spectacle for the reproach or commis"eration of the civilized world." And has not this prediction already come true? Again, in the same month, he wrote to a gentleman in this city, "I "abhor the whole scheme of southern "invasion, with all its horrible consc"quences of rapine and plunder. You "cannot help but to see, sir, what "thousands of us are beginning to see, "that there can no Union be gotten in "this way. The war might have been "avoided, and the Union saved. * * * "Those who drive the car of war at "this time have no more idea of saving "the Union by their bloody sacrifices "of this sort, than they have of changing the course of nature." This, it should be recollected, was written. when people were sent to Bastiles for declaring that the war was not for the Union. But now, in the light of the present position of the Administration, do not these words sound like those of a brave man and a true states

man? At all events, it is such plainspoken, earnest, sincere and consistent language, that has made Col. Seymour the representative man of the anti-coercion Democracy, and we verily believe, were a ticket, as follows: For President-THOMAS H. SEYMOUR, of

Connecticut,

For Vice-President-CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM, of Ohio,

placed before the people, and the Democratic leaders would drop their ignis fatuus of expediency, and honestly tell the people, what every man of them honestly believes, that this Administration is trying to destroy our Government, and not to save it, we should sweep the country as with a whirlwind. The people want the Union, but they must be made to understand, in the language of Colonel Seymour, "that no Union can be gotten in this way." When the Democracy support an Abolition disunion war, they become the ally of the disunion party. Let us have a Democratic Union party, upon the basis of White Supremacy and States Rights, and the people will turn to it as the thirsty traveler seeks the cool and refreshing spring. It may be impossible to impress this view of the subject upon the managers and leaders of the party; but we tremble for our country if they do not sce it.