Weekly national intelligencer., 1847-12-25
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25, ls47
PRESIDENTS MEssaGE.-No. w


sage which relates to the war with Mexico and, il
doing SO, shall avoid the example set by the or
gan of the Executive, of substituting mere vitupera
ton for fair argument, as being equally unworthy
of the gravity of the subject and of the dignity o.
government paper. We shall devote this mum.
ber to some remarks, which appear TO us pertinent
to the occasion, on
TO THE CoNQUERoR.
If the People of the United States desire to be
the wise Nation which they suppose themselves to
be, 1t certainly behooves them maturely to consider
mhat they are to embrace, if they decide adopt
ing those projects Of compulsory dominion which
the President and his followers are now urging
upon them And as, unquestonably, the new ca
reer IN which it is meant they should embark i'm
ples-by It's ambitiousness, its violence its agrees
sveness towards the weak, its exchange of the pur-
pose of good to be achieved at home for glory and
power TO be erected abroad-a reversal of the main
public maxims upon which they became and have
thus far lived as that great moral being naton it
is most necessary that in considering what they are
TO embrace, they should also consider ,cltat then
rW haze to abandon, and what consent to set at
hdzdrd.
When mere magistrate, assuming the authority
of kings, partly by secret devices and partly by open
usurpation, brings war, and then, by artfu ap-
peals to those human infrmities which are common
alike to the breasts of all sovereigns, whether mon
archs or multitude, attempts to kindle up, in the
plain citizens of Republic, those fatal passions
the love of and riumphs, the lust of extended
empire, the appetite 10 take because you can
which have often converted kings into scourges
of the earth and of their people, it becomes the in
dispensable duty of every man who loves the public
safety to warn his feowcitizens of their impending
danger: for that the President of the United States
who, in this day, when Liberty and every coun-
the destroyer of another lands freedom-who
would lay it waste in order to seize its territories
or overturn its independence, and, for such purpo-
ses, breaks over all those fences of the law which
have been set to limit his own Executive powers
then such magistrate as this must be looked upon
as not more the friend of the people whom he COM
mands than of that which he attacks and as, in a
word, hostile, in effect, to the wel-beng and to the
constitutional or inherent political privileges of his
own country, as well as of that whose indepen-
dence he invades.
There can it is clear, be no principle upon which
to establish, in favor of any one society," the right
govern itsel-to choose lis own political nstitu-
mtions-to consult, independently of all other ma
tons, its own public wants and will-which does
not equally apply to all other separate societies
and it is only out of the common right of each nation
us 10 act for itself TO the laws and authorities
under which it shall live within ITSELF that any par
cular right of that sort can inhere in these United
States. TO endeavor, then, under no matter what
prctence or by what agency, TO deprive another peo-
pie Of this It's indefeasi5le privilege is to be The
general enemy Of all freedom and, inasmuch as
liberty is the most precious part Of the life of ma
tons, thus to invade it IS to be nothing less than
hostiS h,tmani generis the common foe of man
kind and of whatever makes its true social hap
piness.
Except this, the legal, rational, and popular the
Dry of Government and its foundation, there is but
one other-the arbitrary and personal, which holds
nations to be not their own property, but the prop
eriy Of whoever can, by force or fraud circumvent
Or master them. That done, he or they-the King
or the body of mobiles, against their own subject
people, or, in Democracy, the mass of one nation
a. against another nation whom it has reduced to
can, under this latter theory, treat them
its personal chatels and dispose Of their life,
liberty, and goods entirely for its own pleasure and
for its own purposes. We need scarcely add that
the first Of these theories is that OF our own Decla
ration Of Independence and that the second is that
upon which stands that precious league, the Holy
Alliance, which, in its assumed right to partition out
the soil, and set up or pull down the Governments
Of European States that owed it no obedience, |
claimed no right which our President does not
equally assert for himself, when he would overthrow
the Government of Mexico, in order " to give
her more republican on3,' or strip her OF nea r
half her territories, in order to force from her in
IDENTITIES which he himself distinctly admits she
had and has no means of paying, otherwise than by
a large alienation and transfer Of her people and
SOIL To compel this partial sale Of herself he now
urges that we should continue the war, still more
TO her blood, more rapaciously as
TO her treasures and strike at the vital parts of
a nation unable to resist us How do those States
Of our own owing foreign debt, Which they too
are utterly unable to pay, unless IN the same man
ner, like this amazing doctrine? Are they also
partisans Of this war and Of it's ohjects-subject to