Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1848-09-30

/ the followers of two long Administrations which
Mr.. CLAY had served beyond all other men. and OF
which Mr.. ADAMS had possessed and merited the
highest confidence, bound to respect and to uphold
those thoroughly-tred statesmen and patriots.
! AS for the Administration which, by thus moving
from their depths all those bad elements of our po-
litics and population that were before unknown,
this league overthrow and for time trampled on,
we need not now state its character. History has
measured it and them, and will set them forever in
contrast. Mr.. ADAMS has gone to his recent grave,
with honors and regrets yielded alike by all parties
to his stainless integrity, his high abilities, his in
vincible courage, his devoted patriotism, his long
and eminent public services; and Mr.. CLAY stands
for every bright and brave quality in its excess
that should lead land to honor or greatness, or,
failing, adorn its annals with memorable name) a
monument rising high above his times, and wonder
for future ones, how, in popular Government, a
genius and character towering up to the very
herosm Of what free people should delight in,
could have had such sad return and been defeated
| by such adversaries as these.
In the frightful contest which preceded and i'm
mediately followed the overthrow of that Admins
tration, every thing prefgured lasting public ca
lamity. BY combination wide, various, and
strange scrupulous of nothing for their purpose and
capable by art and organization of moving all that
could unsee the previous calm of the land and break
up its soberness, every thing was cut loose at once
Each buried animosity of party was dragged from
its grave; life was put anew into each abortive con-
ception of philosophism, well as into the moul-
dering remains of extinct jacobinsm the uni
versal trump of resurrection of every thing i'll
was blown. Nor, CHASTITY as is this picture, will it
be considered an exaggeration, when one recalls
either the shocking resorts then employed, or the
lasting generalization Of society that has followed
their success.
First of these resorts was boundless caumny,
the very vastness of which secured wide credu-
lily: for the vulgar love to hear Of great crimes to
swallow impossbilities or nonsense, at least to
believe that where SO much is charged the mere
truth must be very bad. Gen. Jackson was well
known to have said, when first told that he ought
to set up for the Presidency, that he was not
such 1--WE suppress an eptheD fool as to suppose
himself fit for it - the Richmond Enquirer had
predicted that he would be- if eecteda curse to his
country" Yet Mr.. CLAY (who showed that he had
from the first declared that in choice between
Adams and Jackson, he could not think of support
ing the latter had no sooner voted accordingly,
than the infamous charge of bargain and intrigue"
was made upon him and Mr.. ADAMs-just as if
that explanation was necessary Mr.. ADAMS was
remarkable for the strictness of his life in private
whereupon that fact was used to make him odious:
Mr.. CLAY was not horse-racer nor cock-fghter,
but he had occasionally played at cards, and that
was enough: the union between him and Mr..
ADAMS was held up to detestation by this new
school Of moralists, as that of Blifl (the hypo-
crite) and Black George the ruffian)-a "a COM
bina,on of the puritan and the backlog" This is
but specimen-a hundred more could be cited:
but we turn from them with disgust which we
trust our readers share with US.
But, hand in hand with these individual wrongs,
went things larger and more lasting-practces that
polluted, doctrines that infected the country deeply
poisoned, it must long feel them in its veins Not
merely was party driven to its utmost fury, land
this, as have seen, for no public end,) but, to
make it more brutal, new and low emblems were
given it: the hickory tree, its bludgeons and its
DroOms-SymDOis Oh violence anu OF universal
sweep of prescription the whole hog'-a beastly
lntimation that every principle, no matter how
coarse from snout to tail, must be swallowed and
the husks, the draft, the very swills Of the lowest
politics be dealt out and devoured. But especially,
the wickedest and most fatal of all things was
every where set on foot-a war of society upon it
self; blind hate Of the Poor against the Rich, of
the ignorant against the educated, of the lazy or
thriftless against the Industrious and successful,
and finally Of all the reckless against property it.
self. The common mass of all these were fired
against an imaginary aristocracy, which-there be-
ing no real one to fix the definition upon itself
each envious man who pinned at seeing the we'll
doing of others around, could brand for himself
upon his better neighbors: the large proprietor
was an aristocrat' to the small one-provided
that small one was weak or wicked enough to oc-
cupy himself with disliking his neighbours pros
perity rather than with advancing his own by the
same methods which had created his neighbours or
handed it down. Nor did this easy odium stop at
the wealthy each man who had no self-respect,
each one Of savish soul who in his heart could
not feel that his dignity as free citizen and an
honest man set him upon level with the proudest
IN tho land reod;lu found &C On aristocrat'' in the