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CONTAINING THE POLITICAL AND LITERARY PORTIONS OF
THE NUMBERS PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER, 1837, AND
JANUARY, FEBRUARY AND MARCH, 1838.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

PUBLISHED BY LANGTREE AND O'SULLIVAN.

1838.

83

Jat

THE

UNITED STATES MAGAZINE

AND

DEMOCRATIC REVIEW.

Vol. 1. No. 1.

INTRODUCTION.

THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE-THE IMPORTANCE OF ITS ASSERTION, AND APPLICATION TO
OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM AND LITERATURE.

THE character and design of the work of which the first number is here offered to the public, are intended to be shadowed forth in its name, the "United States Magazine and Democratic Review." It has had its origin in a deep conviction of the necessity of such a work, at the present critical stage of our national progress, for the advocacy of that high and holy DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE which was designed to be the fundamental element of the new social and political system created by the American experiment;' for the vindication of that principle from the charges daily brought against it, of responsibility for every evil result growing out, in truth, of adventitious circumstances, and the adverse elements unhappily combined with it in our institutions; for its purification from those corruptions and those hostile influences, by which we see its beneficent and glorious tendencies, to no slight extent, perverted and paralysed; for the illustration of truth, which we see perpetually darkened and confused by the arts of wily error; for the protection of those great interests, not alone of our country, but of humanity, looking forward through countless ages of the future, which we believe to be vitally committed with the cause of American Democracy. This is, in broad terms, the main motive in which this undertaking has had its origin: this is the object towards which, in all its departments, more or less direly, its efforts will tend.

There is a great deal of mutral misunderstanding between our parties; but in truth, there does not exist in the people, with reference to its great masses, that irreconcileable hostility of opinions and leading principles which would be the natural inference from the violence of the party warfare in which we are perpetually engaged. There does exist, it is true, an essential opposition of principles, proceeding from opposite points of departure, between

VOL.I.NO.I.

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