Weekly national intelligencer., 1848-07-29

Dc, Tie HISL power Vi Tic mOucfH WOflu, Dy
referring their differences to distinguished only
by their enlightened integrity, render their common
homage to peace, to justice and to individual merit
Not at once readily to have submitted TO the very
highest and purest tribunal that mere mortals can
form--not TO have hailed with delight the opportu-
nifty of trying ones rights before such court, ra-
ther than by the blind and brutal chances Of desc
laiing war, which would probably have left both
nations half ruined, though it decided nothing,
implied any thing but confidence in the rectitude of
their own demands, any thing but love Of peace
or of the spirit of civilization or of for their
country and its character.
And what were the shallow, the odious pretences
for all this conduct! The assumption, first, that
our rghts-though thirty years 10 controversy;
though repeatedly by ourselves offered to be settled
by an equal division; though for twenty years re-
duced TO the compromise Of joint enjoyment; and
though subsequently, by these whole.or-none men
themselves, adjusted by an equal partition-were
TOO clear TO be submitted to any adjudication but
the worst of all-that of the sword as if any
body had ever before heard of party's stunning
the law and preferring deadly fight with terrible
foe, because his titles were clear and unqueston-
able - Secondly, that all to which we have at
any time set up a claim became, by that fact,
right, to its whole extent SO that, although nations,
like individuals, usually claim more than they have
title to, in order that they may lose none of their
rights by failing to cover them with copious claim,
yet that we, with deity-like equity and super
human sagacity, always have the marvellous luck
or fate to think and say that nothing is ours but
precisely what, investigation, proves to be SO;
and every body, in controversy with us, must be
entirely wrong, we totally right every thing ours,
nothing theirs. Thirdly, that our territory, because
ours, and because (apparensly) republican, was in
aenabe, and could not, therefore, be submitted 10
arbitration Certainly, notable doctrine this, for
country that bought all Louisiana from the French
Republic, and for an Administration which has just
forced from the Mexican Republic the alienation of
one-third of all its soil Even thus does either
some great and notorious fact in our own public
history stamp the pretended doctrines of these men
as mere nonsense, or their own decisive acts de-
monstrate that those doctrines we're mere device
of wilful fraud and evasion. What shocking per-
version of all sense and all justice is this, which
holds that mans or one nations right to his
its own is of less dignity sanctty than anoher's
Does the form Of government vary peoples rights
as to any other people? These very men are glad
at times to treat Kings having really rightful
authority, even though reigning by the viii of their
people; and yet here they say that King has
right to cede territory while Commonwealth has
none Thus, while King (according to them)
can have no legitimate rights, he has nevertheless
an iuharant oht of fIo afional domain
which Republic, it seems, can beg, borrow, steal,
buy, any thing else, but cannot sell its title to,
matter how good, nor abandon, no matter how bad
We need hardly say that an Executive that sets
up such strange principles, such preposterous
idea as that every claim Of one nation las ours to
SO 400 is right, without being either proved or
admitted, and that the very rights of others (as
Mexicos against Texas to all the east bank Of the
Rio Grande) sink, soon we set up title, into
mere claims which vanish at our pleasure, is only
teaching that all law is only for side that there
is no equality among nations that one privileged
republic has right to whatever it fancies finds
convenient to it that international comfy, humani-
ty, justice, peace, its promises its offers, its admis
sons, its very treaties and cessions-in Short no
thing binds it that its Manifest Destiny is univer-
sal aggression, its supreme policy War and Con-
quest. These barbarian doctrines are really those
on which Mr.. Polk has acted, which Gen. CAss
has sustained, and which this nation is deliberately
to adopt if he is to be placed the head of its pub
lie councils. Not that either Mr. Polk or General
CAss is by any means man filed with the mill
tary spirit, the boundless love OF personal daring
an Alexander Of Macedon, julius Caesar, or
Napoleon Bonaparte-though not even these
ever taught more desolating policy. No: these
are conquerors of discreeter stamp, who, employ
ing other mems swords and breaking their own,
sit safely in the tribune or the club, like those
French demagogues who sent carnage over Europe
that they themselves might in Paris ruin by in
trigue the Generals in the field, and prescribe their
iellow-citzens at home. Warriors and heroes they
are but, in their ambition and their valor, most
like to that Emperor of Lilliput who meant to send
Gulliver to subjugate his neighbors for him, while
he stad in his palace and enjoyed the spoiIs-''
One Of the most Christian Of modern poets, Cow
per, has finely said,
War is game at which, subjects wise,
Kings would not play.
This thought, however just, was by no means
original one for in all ages the truth was plain