Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1850-01-05
SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1850.
THE PRESIDENTS MEssAGE.-No. II.

dent TAYLOR, from the momehs vi hiS homiha'ioi
as candidate for the Presidency, and compares 1t
with the lures which were previously held out by the
same party to tempt him from the path of straight
forwardness which he had always trod, can be at
loss TO discover that the war which is made upon
his first Message to Congress has no real relation
to the merits or the particular contents of that pa
per. i would have been equally made, had the
Message like the first Message of his latest prede-
cessor, been as verbose, as vapd as ambitiously
rhetorical as hollow and as dsingenuous is in
every respect directly the reverse; that is to say,
terse, sententious, unpreending, truthful and sin
cere. The Opposition to the Administration not
only began before it had done any thing to be oppos-
ed but before it came into existence. That OPP
position became more and more violent in proper
ton as the President would do nothing that could
honestly be opposed; and it is more violent than
ever, now that the Message has blown sky-high all
the false issues which mere faction and blind hate
had made up in the absence of any thing substantial
to ground an Opposition upon.
These issues being all exploded, the strained at
tempts which are made to raise new ones out of
the Message itself are for the most part sub
jects for merriment rather than for serious argu-
ment. Such, for example, is that to convert into a
charge against the present Administration the pub
lie debt in various forms and the deficiency in the
Treasury, created by the foreign policy, wise or
foolish of the Immediately preceding one and that
other, to repeal inStanter the Home Depart
ment-the only measure Except the Subtrsasury)
of interior legislation by which the last Admins
tration will be much remembered.
nh u. III bx,tb o On
position are indeed so opposite and inconsistent
in many cases to be sufficiently answered by being
stated, side by side, one with another. The
g Upion, in this city, for instance, in its second
number on the Message, describes it as paper
switch an American representative has no right to
address to the People, for, argues the ex-organ
J of that President who assumed more monarchieal
power than any of his predecessors but one ever
dreamed of, Our Government is not monarchy,
" and our Chief Magistrate but servant of the Peo
"ple he has no right, therefore, to hold the
Language which the Queen of England holds from
"her throne" This is the doctrine of some pes
tilent Wing, who has silly sp it into the columns
of the Union, where it is, to say no more of it,
very much out of its latitude. 1t is capital Wing
doctrine but how far applicable to any thing in the
Presidents Message, let the commentary of other
leading Oppositionists determine. Thus, saith one,
the New Haven Register aside from some
ridiculous and obsolete Tariff notions, it 1.-THE
"Message] is remarkable for nothing but its sim
"pHcity, and the absence of any mark of states
"manship.' Another (the Boston POST represents
it as so ,ame'' and spiritless'' that "Demo-
"crats of the jackson school, who like fearless
strong American doctrine, ,OiN not like It," And
third treats its plain and unassumng character
| "an a6ectatisn of simplicity" We might fill
columns with equally absurd and homogeneous ex-
ceptions taken to the Message by those who would
have equally opposed it had it contained the wis
dom OF Omnscence delivered in the tongue Of
Angels.
Beside the merely idle and fippant criticisms
| upon the Message, however, few Of sufficient
substance to deserve more respectful and attentive
| consideration.
| The first which we shall take up is that Of the
| Boston Post" which speaks of the Message in
| in the following terms:
i" 1t is passably well written, tame in its tone to-
wards foreign Governments, Wing in its domes-
tic policy, and flat in its constitutional law. De-
mocrats Of the Jackson school, who like fearless,
strong, decided American doctrine, will not like
it. The people will not respond to its rank con-
servatism.
This objection is at least real and consc-
entous one. 1t is not all pretence or, in the cas-
sic language of our neighbor, !" humbug and gam
mon." The Message is acknowledged to be /" well
written. 1t rs objected to it, that it is not bellicose
in its tone towards foreign Governments tina, it is
Wing in its domestic policy; that it is far from
lofty in its pretensions to power under the Con-
stituton; that it is thoroughly conservative and
that therefore Democrats " of the Jackson school,
will not like it.
No journal can be better entitled than the POST
| to speak the sentiments If " the Jackson school,"
| No one, we satisfied, more sincerely entertains
them. We have frequently had occasion to note the
ardent devotion Of that printto the doctrines of that
school, and its frank and forcible illustration of
them and, in the present case itspeaks plainly and
without reserve the same sentiments as those by
which some others are influenced whose grounds
Of objection to the Message are clad in language less
plain and ineligible.
We are glad at length to find the !" doctrine of
the Message challenged, and placed as it fairly is,
in contrast with the doctrine Of Constitutional law
and practice of the Jackson school. The doctrines
Of the Taylor school-in othe words, Of the Wing
school-and those of the Jackson school aforesaid,
being as wide as the poles apart the mere state