Weekly national intelligencer., 1847-12-25


lence of the inferior orders grew in proportion TO
the grandeur Of the empire. Early after the expu-
sion of their kings began those incessant wars upon
their neghbors by which the wealth, pride, and
dominion of the State, or rather of the patrcian
order, who legisated in peace and commanded in
the field, were carried so far, while the people,
constantly called out to fill the ranks, left their
families in indgence, and became little less than the
slaves of the mobiles, who, lending them money at
exorbtant interest, seized on their persons or strip
ped them of the part of conquered lands assigned
them. By and by, at such distributions, they di-
verted from the people, and from the soldiery
who had conquered them, all share in the lands thus
mercilessly wresed from some unhappy neighbor
on whom they had fallen. Hence incessant tumuts
and sedtons, especially such as had for their OBJ
iect the passage of so-called "Agrarian Laws !"
which were, in reality, not laws for the equal dvi-
sion of all lands-not "voe-yoursel-a-farm" no
tons-but only legitimate efforts to recover by law
for the people their fair proportion in each distrbu-
ton of conquered Uhat is annexed) territory. All
this was, however, foed by the superior policy and
steadiness of the few-he rich, the mobiles until, at
last, left poweress amidst the wide military strength
founded originally in their blood, the people of
Rome lost every thing but the right of voting for
Consus Qheir one-year Presidents) or raising
mobs and, sinking lower and lower as their empire
became vaster and vaster, saw the victorious army
of CHINA and Marius or Sylla poured upon their
city, to bathe it in the blood of alternate proscrip-
tions; or beheld Clodius spread terror through
their streets with armed bands of gladiators and
slaves; or witnessed the almost successful conspi-
racy of Catiline to give Rome to pillage and
flame embraced with delight the usurpation of
julius Caesar; drove out the patriot Bruus who had
struck down the self-made dctator-for-fe; and be-
coming, under the Emperors, beggars as well as
slaves, sought nothing of the tyrants whom the
Pratorian guards made or unmade at will and for
largesses, but 'paaem et circenses" gifts of bread
and public shows. Such was the popular happi-
ness and greatness under that conquerng Roman
Republic whose name and example are the main
ones now held up by the Conquest Party to allure
our people to their own enslavement in that of
othe' nations.
But why do they not tell us Of Carthage, which,
guided by commercial rather than military
spirit long pursued, not for glory but gain, nearly
like career? She, too, had stretched her sway far
and wide; but stretched it till it snapped. Mean
time her people at home became the mere subjects
OF Commercial Oligarchy, and every right of the
citizen was swallowed up in the necessity OF
suffering its Government to assume such pow
ers as ever requisite to contain wide, and
especially new-made dominions, in obedience. Led
by the interest or the vanity of subjugating
foreign States, the Carthaginian forgot, in those
delusive passions, his jealousy of his own rulers.
war of aggrandizement being popular, the Gov
ernment could, without public alarm, assume, as
necessary to its success and merely temporary,
powers never before permitted. These the con-
tinuaton of the war would always sanction. Per-
haps it was long and hard-contested in which case
las IN ours now pending with Mexco) the Govern
ment would ask like our PresidenD still ampler
discretion and again it would be yielded, as one
of the necessities of war, or even the means OF
''honorabe" that is, successfully "peace." All
this would be done, as mere momen,ary enlarge
ment of the Executive authority: but it is never
such. The powers lent to make a conquest must
be continued, in order to retain il and where the
struggle against your invasion has been long and
herce, hate OF your sway, conspiraces and re-
volts to shake it off will remain behind, to foil and
finally to tame which your Executive must be suf
Tered to exercise for years absolute powers in his
neW dominion and nearly the same in his old. For
when nation has staked all that it must stake il
war or on conquest, its usual care of its own
freedom is always set aside; so that in long wars
the spirit of constitutional freedom constantly de-
Gays, and must at last cease altogether among
people who are always attacking and subjugating
somebody or other Nothing is more inevitable
than the process which we are tracing-especially
when, after you have, as above, governed con.
quered country for years by the arms and at the
discretion of your Executive, its spirit becomes com
pletely broken, its people mere slaves then your
Government, to which you just now gave arbitrary
powers and military strength TO be wielded against
the conquered nation, receives from them in turn
arbitrary powers 10 be cielded against yoa; and
as you formerly helped your ruler to make then,
slaves, they will help him TO make you slaves
Of Athens, which, being democracy, grew am
bilious of commanding armies and making con-
quests from the midst of its market place, little
need be said than to remind our readers OF Thucy-
dides and Plutarch; the vain projects of the Peo-
ponesian war the gay and grand expedition to Sci-
ly; its total defeat and destruction the SIEGE the