DEATH OF JOE AND HYRAM SMITH.

Alas for human greatness! One of the nominated candidates for the next presidency is already a lifeless corpse. Even the sanctity of his high profession as a prophet and a leader, could not preserve him, though performing almost miracles in deluding thousands to his mystical faith, and detaining them in unaccountable subservience to his will, notwithsanding the flagrant deviation of his course from that designated by the meek and lowly pattern whom he professed to be imitating and serving, who so often and emphatically declared to his disciples, “My kingdom is not of this world, whilst Joseph evidently aspired to a full share the kingdoms of this wor[l]d, as far, and as fast as he could grasp hold of them. His influence over the Mormon community, in such a country as ours, furnishes a humbling proof, of how much is yet to be done to redeem the people from ignorance and delusion. Joseph unquestionably indulged some faint hope of extending his rapidly accumulated power, from Nauvoo, to the extremities of the Union, and dreamed even of expanding those limits far beyond what they now are circumscribed to. His EXPOSE of what he would do if elected president of the United States, his letters to the several candidates, and his nomination by conventions at Boston and elsewhere, evince that he was determined to make a demonstration for the Capitol and dictatorship. Why should we wonder at his infatuation? Is it at this moment a singular instance?

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The fact that the Mormons entertained a serious determination to make their prophet a prominent candidate for political power is inferred, not only from their hoisting their presidential flag at the head of all their recent publications—“For President, General JOSEPH SMITH, of Nauvoo, Illinois—For Vice President, SIDNEY RIGDON, Esq., of Pennsylvania,”— and from their calling conventions, making nominations in states in which they have societies, and from their preparations for holding a NATIONAL PRESIDENTIAL CONVENTION, like the other political parties, at the city of Baltimore, where several of the delegates had arrived when the intelligence of the death of the prophet reached there,—not only we say, from those indications, but from the contents of their journals we judge of their views. . .