Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1850-02-02

SOUTHERN CONVENTION cannot in any manner ado
to the security of Southern property and rights
i already guaranteed by the Constitution of the United
States, sustained and enforced, its provisions u
doubleday will be, both in the first and in the last re-
sort, by the Judiciary Of the United States.
This resort to the mode prescribed by the Con-
sttution for asserting rights guaranteed by that in
strument and for redressing wrongs inflicted by the
action of the General Government or of the State
Governments, is, however, disdained by those who
are disposed to foment and exasperate rather
than to abate the evil of the day. They cannot
consent to trust their rights and liberties to any
established tribunal: they must have one which is
more sure to answer their purposes.
1t is in our power to point them to case in the
history Of this Republic, in which inaenable rights
Of the entire population Of number of the original
States of this Union were not only endangered, but
indefinitely suspended by the legislation of the &C.
neral Government and, as it is case which to
perhaps four-ffths of our readers will be almost
entirely new, and cannot be without interest to any
Of them, we will briefly relate its principal points.
1t was on the 22d day of December, 1907, that the
whole country was astounded by the publication
of an Act Of Congress, passed in secret session,
laying unlimited Embargo, in effect writ Of
ne e1eat, upon all vessels of all sorts in the ports
and harbors of the United States whether engaged
in commerce or in the fisheries, whether laden or
unladen, and whether in the Northern ports in
which they were owned, or in the Southern
ports to which they had gone for cargoes.
A more whitening blast upon all the occupations
connected with commerce, in the first instance, but
necessarily upon all other branches of industry
upon property, the right of access to the sea,
and the means of subsistence-is not on record,
unless in cases of devastation by fire and sword,
or by earthquake, pestilence, or famine, through
which whole generations Of the sons Of men have
persisted. This measure was preceded by no mo-
tice preparation was depending to require
or justify it: it wass not embargo, in the just
sense of the term, which implies soppage of trade
for limited time only. No. it was, on the con-
trary, system deliberately intended to withdraw
all our trading vessels from the ocean, the plea
of keeping them safe from the cross-fre of the Bril-
fish and French denuncatons Of neutrality in the war
between them-but in the delusive calculation, also,
that, by Withholding our agricultural products from
those beigerents, we could force them to respect
the outraged neutral rights Of this country. The
influence Of President JEFFERSON over the two
Houses of Congress was then so irresistible that
the bill passed both Houses almost inStanter, al
though no reasons were given for the measure in
Congress, nor in the Official paper at the seat of
government except, by this last, that it would be
dignifed retirement within ourselves with
drawal of our commerce from the ocean, which pre-
scented field on which no harvest could be reaped
but that of danger, spoliaton, and disgrace-the
best thing that could be done under the crcum-
stances; and, finally, that cit had been recon-
nended By the President, who had the best means
of knowing the policy of foreign nations" This
last argument was clincher: there was, in those
days, no resisting, it, unless in the case Of some
sturdy impracticable, new at Court, like VIM. H.
CRAWFORD, of Georgia, who had but just come into
the Senate, who was not content with arguments
founded upon mere blind confidence, and refused
to- vote for the bill, because no had been
given to Congress for it but the Presidents will.
He, in the Senate, and three Of the four Repre-
sentatives of Georgia in the other House, voted
therefore against the bill but, with these excep
tons, nearly the whole South voted for the bill
all six of the Representatives from South Carolina
voted for it, and all but three out OF the seventeen
from Virginia This act had hardly been made public
before it became necessary to pass supplements
and amendments to it. adding penalty to penalty,
and exacting bonds upon bonds, until this measure,
patriotic unquestionably in its origin, but based
upon false theories and unphilosophical nductions,
became in its operation one of the most oppressive
and tyrannical ever devised by the wit Of man.
1t had been in existence nearly year, without
the least apparent prospect of its termination, when
the Legislature of Massachusetts passed resolu-
tons, which presented to Congress the 25th
Of November, 1903, instructing the Senators and
requesting the Representatives from that State to
endeavor to procure its repeal We are able rea-
Oily to quote from that document las published in
the American State Papers) the description of the
effects of the Embargo as felt in Massachusetts
then including what is now the State Of Maine and
her sister States of New England--not more for
the purpose Of giving the reader some idea of the
cruelty and oppression Of that measure, than to
show how State like Observation-Disclosures great
State in the Confederacy- of resorting to
her reserved rights" could, though crippled and
hear-strickenb subdue her feelings, come before
Congress with composure, and in language at once
touching and respectful, thus present the common
grievance of herself and her sister States to its
consideration
The produce of our agriculture, Of our forests,