Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1850-01-05
PRESIDENT TAYfoR's FIRST MESSAGE.

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PRESIDENT TAYEoRs FIRST MESSAGE.
The readers of the National Inteligencer having
now had time to digest the contents Of the Annual
Executive. Message to Congress---a task greatly
lightened by its comparative breyity--may expect
to hear from us, with some particularly, what we
think of it. f5
Having already in general terms expressed our
earty appreciation Of it, and our determination to
stand by it as an embodiment of true Republican
principles and practce,w shall not carry our read
ers through course of laudation of it. paragraph by
paragraph, sentence by sentence. There is nothing
in so elaborately obscure as to require the help OF
an interpreter; nothing SO ambitiously rhetorical
or superfnely sentimental that it is necessary to
turn it into plain English to make it Ineligible
to every man Of common understanding. If it be
not every word of it from the pen Of the President
himself, it is altogether SO like him that its pater
nity cannot be doubted. No one rise from
its perusal without having discovered in it the
element Of his eminent success in his late profess
sionthe faculty of impar,ing to every thing under
his direction the impress of his own strong sense,
obstinate integrity, and resolute will.
Our more agreeable duty in regard to this Mes
sage will be to defend in detail what we have al
ready approved in general to endeavor to uphold
it, as well against the exceptions of honest doubters,
as the cavs Of predetermined and wiful assailants
With this view, our attention is necessarily first
directed TO the journal which is nearest to us, and
which is moreover entitled, as /" the sole organ" of
the Opposition in this quarter to early and special
consideration.
In taking up the article of the g Uaion" of the
day following the transmission Of the Message, we
are less impressed by its obvious malevolence to-
wards the Administration than by the levity with
which it approaches equally the greatest and the
least topics to which the Message invites the public
attention.
sThe Message" says the Union, I" makes a
hasty allusion to the late difficulties with France,
(which, it alleges, have been amicably settled by
: the reception Of our Minister.
What does the I" Union mean by saying that
the Message alleges SO and SO Does the " Union
doubt that the late difficulties with France have
been I" settled'" Does it regret that they have
been g amcably settled? II not either the one
or the other, why grudgngly present to its read
ers a fact for the first time distinctly made known
in the Message fact enough to make the heart
Of every good man leap with joy, that France and
the United States are friends again Is it not a
subject for national pride that the course of the
Administration has been such, in this delicate con-
juncture as to lead to an auspcious settlement of
the difficulty, in the face of the efforts Of the
Union,'' and some other journals of the same COM
plexion, to embarrass the Administration in its ad-
justrnent, and to ince the French Government to
persist in wrongs which that Government itself
now disclaims The same national feeling which
ought to have rejoiced in the peaceful vindicaton
Of the honor of the country, implicated by the
acts of the Minister Of France-with all the as
sistance, be itrepeated, which !" the Union could,
with its utmost effort, afford him-that same ma
tional pride, ought il not to have been excited and
warmed into appreciation, instead of being chilled
into chnrlish disparagement, by the dignity, pro-
priety, and courtesy with which, since it was ne
csssary TO introduce the subject into the Message,
it is there treated and by its true and timely ex-
preston of the sentiment of anity by which the
People of the United States still are, as they had
long been, bound to the People and the Re-
public Of Frances Yet, in this part Of the Mes
sage, the good taste of which we trust will be
generally appreciated, the critic Of the /" Union"
Gan sec only = HaSte III making an " allega-
ton" in which il appears to desire the readers of
the "sole organ" 10 place no confidence. AS
the Unon," in another paragraph of its article,
(in speaking of the affairs of the Government
Of the United States with Spain and its depen-
dency Cuba,) ntimates desire for Congress
sional call for the Correspondence in the case and
is so dissatisfied with the haste of the notice
of the French affair, and little less so with the al
legation which i contains, we invite its Editors
to make interest with their friends who practically
hold the power in both Houses of Congress, to
call for the papers in the case, in order to ascertain
whether The allegation be wel-founded, or whe-
ther there be any thing in those papers which should
justify the suspicion that the haste" Of this notice Of
our relations with France was caused by any thing
in them which the Executive could have had any
motive for desiring to withhold suppress, or rnys-
tify. Whenever produced, we venture the predic-
ton tha, they will confound the cayillers.
The next thing in the order of the comments of
the " Union" which appears worthy Of notice is
its exception to the Recommendation by the Presi-
dent of the appointment of Counsel for the United
States before the Commission on Mexican Claims. J