Weekly national intelligencer., 1848-06-03

tural fruit" and the incumbered negotiation Tell
through, or, more properly speaking, could be pre-
tended to hare fallen through, instead Of reporting
the matter back to the sole competency of Con-
gress, he assumed most royalty to consider every
thing further remitted to his sovereign discretion,
the Congressional instruction TO treat as dissolved
by the little land all that little wrong which he had
DONE and himself invested, the first conrived or
incurred failure Of negotiation (aot final and which
he had no right to act on further If It had been
6nal,) with authority to proceed to War measures,
open and secret, without any sort of Difference to
the lawful authority of Congress.
Such are the vast, the boundless, the strictly des
potic and discretionary powers which the President
who has fulfilled the hopes of Democracy" by his
stricf construction of the Consttuton-has directly
usurped, as to the initiation of war, that highest
and most awful Of all the acts which society can
do These usurpations reach to nothing short OF
subverting the whole constitution of the Executive
power as one dependant on the laws or coordinate
with other authorities, and leave the President
plainly to speak as our forefathers would have
spoken, let their degenerate sons stop the ear as
they may--no longer legal Chief Magistrate, but
a constituted tramper on all law and right. And
now, after thus sezing in all the cases we have
enumerated-cases which it will be vain to dis
pute-the initiative and original power of war,
what next What but that, of course, he has pro-
ceeded to exercise as he liked, and for what objects
suited him, all the subsequent power OF conducting
war, Having assumed at home all the rights Of
KING, he has gone on to practice abroad all the
ha had ad
to himself all political power over our foreign rela-
tions there he has capped the column of that sove-
reign discretion with the open and absolute asser-
ton for himself of all civil, all military, all NUM-
cipal, all religious, all pecuniary, and every other
sort of authority. All this, enormous as it is, will
abundantly appear under the following speciica-
tions
|. He has set up Civil Governments; he has
continued them in authority, seeking not even a
legal sanction for them; just as if these things had
no need to flow from any other source but himself.
g. He has issued to them Constitutions, in
which, by strange confusion Of the obligations OF
that Of the United States with his own will, he has
given or withheld as much or little Of either as
seems to him good.
g. He has, by his mere rescript, enacted for New
Mexico and California codes of law, in which a
civil or military character, an American or a
Mexican, Catholic or Protestant prevails, as
pleases him; while in other quarters equally sub
.dued (along the lower Rio Bravo, and at Tampico
and Vera CRUZ he has, under like circumstances,
granted no constitution and no code.
4. He has in some of these quarters abolished
and in others left untouched their native religious
establishment of Catholicism, alleging, where he
abolished it, that Constitution of the United States
of which, in other particulars he only granted them
what he chose, but Of which the benefits must
either enure to them entire, or not at all.
5. In certain conquered regions he has exacted
allegiance; and, in others equally subdued, he has
not thus making fidelity to the country of ones
choice into thing from which he unloose, with
which he can bind, whole provinces, at his pleasure.
6. In Santa Fe men have been tried for treason,
and for that alleged crime put to death. Now,
treason is crime which an alien cannot commit.
These men were aliens, not only because they
owed allegiance to another Government, but be-
cause neither there nor any where else could they
be converted into citizens, except by the joint vir-
tue of the laws of the United States (which had
not been extended to them and their own free con-
sent, (which had not been given.) Their execu-
ton, therefore, was mere murder, if they were
prisoners of war, not citizens and if they scere
citizens, then, treason against the United States be-
ing an offence not cognizable except by court of
the United States, these victims, tried, convicted
and put to death by sham tribunals, were so many
American citizens murdered.
Z. The Executive has, in New Mexico and Cali
forna, attempted to create citizenship of the Uni
ted States, apart from the Constitution Of the Uni
ted States, Of which he had dealt out TO them
but fragments citizenship consisting only appa-
renty in forced oath of allegiance, privation of
the protection Of our laws or tribunals, the special
franchise of being tried for treason by any body
that Colonel PRICE or General or Colonel somebody
else should appoint, and the inestimabe immunity
of living under military law.
8. As if, however, all benefits were matters not
of right, but of his grace, he has granted no such
citizenship in other quarters equally entitled to it,
whereby perhaps it comes that nobody has there
been hung or shot by Executive authority.
Q. Organizing governments and instituting laws
he liked, all officers for the territories which he
had erected have been appointed by his authority,
and by the same authority has been fixed the CON-