Weekly national intelligencer., 1847-12-18


Such is the legal force which would ,o,c he in
arms, if regiments were always full to their estima-
ted complement Of 100 men, or if none ever died.
But the actual force now IN campaign, or OH their
way to the seat of war, left to take care of posts
within the United States, is, according to the same
report, as follows:
Regulars in the field or on their way........ 2l,5O9
Volunteers do. do. do .......... 22,027
Aggregate of those active service .... AZ, ,536
Add 1--WE suppose) six companies of regulars and
ten Of volunteers, stationed at Indian posts
within the United States. ............. 1881
General aggregate. ............. 44,9l7
This, now, as force permanently in arms, must
be considered standing army sufficiently formi-
dabe, if there any reality in that dread Of
one which wise republicans have always taught, and
nations more fond of their own freedom than ambi-
tious of governing others have always cherished.
But even this is not enough the President calls
loudly for ten regiments of regulars, and I'VE
suppose) as many more of volunteers which, at
full compliments, will make twenty-five thousand
men more. Thus we are to have, besides some
twenty thousand g authorized by law" but minus
OF the full complement in some cases, standing
army, and not merely on paper, some sixty-seven
thousand strong. Nor must we forget what the Ad-
Jutant Generals report before further says: that
the troops heretofore kept in our seaboard and lake
orresses have all been withdrawn, in order TO rein
force our armies in Mexico; and that they must speed
lily be replaced only because the deences Of great
maritime points, like those Of Boston and Newly ork,
the Delaware, Old Point Comfort, Charleston, and
others, or of Navy Yards like Portsmouth, Nor
j e cll n. 4.
because our great and costly system OF sea-forts
will fall into immediate dilapidation if left for but
a year or two unoccupied by sufficient bodies of
troops. So that the very supposition-the continu-
ance of the war-which makes necessary the forces
now asked, will equally require the raising of as
many more troops-say some five or six thousand
as have been Withdrawn from our fortresses; add
ing to which some thousands needed in Oregon,
we must certainly count at not short of seventy
five thousand men the army which these Presi-
dental plans Of Mexican subjugaton will require
to be raised and permanently kept on foot.
Let it be remembered that, for these estimates,
we take only positive data-facts in existence,
and furnished by the actual state of the army, or
by the Presidents own acquisitions and the conse-
quences which they inevitably involve.
l
you who trembled for your liberties, when the Fede
ralists, in John Adamss day, raised few thousand
regular troops-you whom certain among us have,
until within few years, piled with alarms against
even our poor little West Point army, which, ex-
cept as a school of war, was but name-behold
what those very demagogues, with Jefferson
ever on one point Of their forked tongues and Fe-
deralism on the other, have brought you to! By
the grossest Presidential usurpaton, they have not
only, in order to recover their failing party-popu-
larty, plunged you into which that living pa
riarch of old republicansm, integrity, and wisdom,
ALBERT GALLATIN, denounces TO you, as if with
his last breath, as utterly wrongful, cruel and i'm
politic but they are attempting, under the preence
that the national honor is at stake for the endless
I and relentless prosecution of such a war; to fasten
upon you aperpetual standing army.
We need surely not recur to historical examples,
nor cite the venerable authorities against such a
fatal step, As in some other things, so, happily,
call il relgion-in the public mind. Ii may have
borne that President of the United States should
have contrived, for his own ends, War which
can hardly fail to be as perncious in its event as it
was bad in its origin but, when the Public sees
that, in addition every other disaster, 1t is to fix
upon US that bane of public freedom, Perpetual
Standing Army will it not, besides disrusting and
rejecting the new demands of patronage and power
by the President hold him to the strictest account
for the use or abuse of the power already entrusted
10 his hands