Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-08-07

food, &c. exacted by terror. They may be levied
upon an enemy they may be upon the friend or
the citizen. Rob Roy levied black mail over all
the Lowlands of Scotland near him. Jack Cade
seized on the goods of the Londoners. Brennus
was collecting military contribution in Rome when
Camillus attacked and destroyed him. They were
much employed by Attila, Alaric, Genserc, and the
other respectable conquerors of their day. In later
times they had grown to be held very savage way
of carrying on war, until that friend of HUMANITY
Napoleon Bonaparte, revived them with view to
the precise system which our Administration has
resorted to, of invading people and making them
pay for it.
But further: Contributions imply no possession.
You may sail up to city which you are not able
to take and hold but which knows you can damage
it greatly, and make it buy you off, You may even
adopt more general and permanent plan: the Al
gerines and Tripolitans once exacted from Chris
tian Powers regular annual tribute for not plum
dering their commerce. LATTE sat down on his
island and levied communication money on the trade
of New Orleans.
Gaul or Goth, however, and Conqueror or Cor
the seas who can, for his army or his crew, take
contributions. They belong the soldier or sailor
m place of booty or prize-money Properly, there
fore, even if they be put into the military chest,
the Commander gives what account of them likes
him.
For all these reasons, and because sums forced
out of that which civilized war now shuns to take
individual propery-are considered disgraceful, re-
spectacle Governments have seldom practsed them
in form, bit left them among those licenses of war
in which The military must sometimes be INDUCED.
Now this is what the contributions recognised by
National Law are.
If, then, the Presidential Tariff at Vera Cruz be
really military exaction of the money of ndividu-
ais, fist, it is savage practice; secondly, Com
modores and Generals are they who have the right
and, thirdly, the money got should properly 60 to
the Amy and Navy, not as pay but as prize-money.
But i it is tax, an impos, or excise, " to pay
the debts and provide for the common defence and
general welfare of the United States" that is pow
er BY the constitution expressly confined to Con-
gress alone, and which the President has not the
shadow of right to exercise.
So much for all this circle of Subjects not to be
treated without an analysis of them all. We have
taken some pains to make it clear and now what
do we see?
But this We have military possession of GER
tain points Mexico-points just co-extensive with
the space which each body Of our forces covers
1t is possession far as the length of our swords
and bayonets and within the deadly range of our
musketry and ordnance. We have not a civil
officer there; or, if we have, his commission is
blank for no process of the United States is serv-
there; or he would be in the same predicament as
any other civil officer. Yet, by an ingenious fic-
ton, not legal only but military, 1.-THE last kind of
fiction we had never heard of before)-by flight
of ubiquity, kind of omnpresence, of which an
gels themselves not held capable, he is not only
here, dispensing the grateful and impartial ray of
the spoils, but he shines in Oregon, won by such
bright diplomacy; blesses New Mexico with the
light of Lynch code of hanging and whipping /;
pours about him in California the religious irradia-
ton of new Protestant Reformation confers with
Santa Anna in Cuba and lets him in at Vera Cruz,
only to be beaten horribly by Gen. Taylor at
Buena Vista then, personally adding all SCOTS
trophies to Rough and Ready's, he sits down at
Vera Cruz, lets fly his bombs; takes the town and
castle with Casarean swifness; marches upon
Cerro Gordo; posts on with the wings of victory
to Jalapa, Perote, and Puebla but, supplying him
self very i'll with transportation and renorcements,
halts there for month; while, at the same instant,
he is in Vera Cruz, evying most marvellous Ia
riff, and arriving from Washington with Mr.. Trst
and the Three Millions, he tries to negotiate with
Santa Anna, whom he so much outwitted before,
and endeavors to upset fresh "plae of soup" upon
the hero of Chippewa! Here there, every where
at once civil, military legislative, judicial and ex-
ecutve dove of peace, thunderbolt of war, and a
perfect serpent of diplomacy, who was ever so va
rious or so amazing
The Philadelphia Inquirer says that the sem-annua Au-
gust interest the debt Of Pennsylvania promptly paid