Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-03-13


GEORGE Evans, of Maine.
SPENCER JARNAGIN, of Tennessee.
JAMES Il. MoREHEAD, of Kentucky,
JAMES F. SIMMONS, of Rhode Island
WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE, of Michigan.
1t is not fit that men of public career so useful
and honorable should return to private life with no
token OF the national regret and esteem which
company them, and will grace their retirement if
that is to be lasting. The due tribute, we might,
under other circumstances, hesitate to render; for
we love not that suspicious praise which celebrates
men high in place, any more than we admire that
independence which is always ready to lash the
greatest or the most deserving, soon as they dis
oblige party or power. Enough will always be
found to magnify those whose fortune rides high:
the sncerer task better suits of bestowing upon
those for the instant depressed the need of discrm-
mating applause. We shall endeavor then, to
speak of these retiring Senators each in the sort
of encomium which he has, during his term, merit
ed-taking them up in alphabetical order, and be-
ginning, Of course, with
WILLIAM s. ARCHER
Than Mr.. ARCHER, the Senate had come to
know, on both Sides that it contained no honeser
nor drawer man-none Of purposes more elevated
triot more real. The hereditary instincts of an
excellent race had in him been so cultivated into all
that became one acting in the eye of public atten-
ton, that, while ausere in his ideas of intercourse
with such he could respect, his own invaria-
BILE integrity and propriety had long commanded
from all his compeers of the Senate, that hight
at times unwling-esteem which all men are
forced to yield TO manners unafectedly lofty, and
opinions sincere, firm, and mature. AS states
man and legislator, his views-though sometimes
developed at disadvantage from the want of CON-
pass of his voice and too great love for senten-
tiousness Of style-were such as beftted a man
largely informed by study and ripened by abundant
experience They were LIBERAL without being in
the smallest degree loose, and republican with not
the slightest faint of that which is, even in good
men, the infrmity, and in bad the pest, of our
times and country-demagogue compliance with
the humor, or the notion or the popularity, the
pretended patriotism, Of the hour. All this was
eminently his for not the highest spirit Of
our age, whoever he may be, was more Indifferent
to success and favor, to be won by the sacrifice of
duty and truth and lasting honor. Through almost
his entire Senatorial term, he stood the representa-
tive of State where the shftings of doctrine ex-
posed him to instruction-that pernicous Virginia
machinery for overturning the constitutional indie
pendence of legislators, in order that they who
have gotten up counterfeit public will may mount
/. to power: and yet Mr.. ARCHER never for mo-
ment either covered before that popular artillery
or las more difficult to such man) voluntarily
provoked it. For that, he loved his State too
much, and respected too much her very errors to
desire to call forth pernicious practice, which
would have been vainly employed against him, and
could only have diminished her. With an equal
intrepdity he wthstood many other opinions of
his Sate--her Jacksonism, her hard-money fam
ces her annexation, her anti-tarifsm, and the en-
tire body of her darling abstractons-that cheap
and that unerring political wisdom which can, with
few vague sentences and a syllogsm or so, re-
solve every difficulty of practical affairs, and dis
pense with all ability experience or honesty, ex-
cept those of word-catchers and quibblers. With
all these high public qualities, and with every per-
sonal one that can beget the confidence and afec-
ton of the good, it the misfortune of Mr.
ARCHER to love his State rather than Texas, the
Constitution more than Annexation a limited goy-
eminent more than unlimited empire, and inf
nitey to prefer deserving to succeeding serving his
country to fattering the crowd. These are mis-
takes now producing the downfall of many other
wise clever and respectable gentlemen.
JOHN MACPHERSON BERRIEN.
Of Mr.. BERRIEN we had occasion warmly to
speak about year since, when he for time threw
up his commission as Senator. We then men,
toned, in particular the brilliant iurisprudentia
abilities which he has constantly displayed, in all
matters where the Senate had to deal with questions
systematic legislation. Learnedand yet luminous.
philosophical and yet practical, master of nearly
every part OF Law a science, we have long
held him, for general usefulness, to be an orna-
ment 10 the Senate. His political abilities are
not much less distinguished. No man can well
be found of public opinions more just large, and
enlightened and none, certainly, who more firmly
and conscentiously by his actions or more ABLY
by his eloquence sustains them. Like Mr.. ARCHER.
he too has, with a constancy and recttude which
do him the highest honor, stood out against
popular variations at home In what was sup
posed an Anti-tarif State, he has upheld Protec-