Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1851-11-22
PHnApELpH1A, NOVEMBER IT, 1851

less except;onable admit in tone is Mr.. Secretary
WALKERS opinion on the same occasion, he limit
ing it merely to cooperation with one nation
Great Britan-and that the one least likely to need
1t. Il seems to me, proud as am to call myself
Man Of American Tradition, that all this is most
dangerous, and the more dangerous because there
something in the state of the times and our own
perplexed relations with at least foreign nation
which may make such heresy popular.
We have had great many Of these sympathies,
but heretofore they have been very harmless, and,
except in the one instance of the first French revo
luton, not even in appearance dangerous. Such,
for example, is our chronic sympathy with Irelarids
wrongs, which evaporates in harmless eloquence or
in individual liberality. Such our sympathy
with Greece, which practically led to no bad re-
suits and enriched our parliamentary literature with
at least great and immortal speech. Such, too,
our sympathy with republican South America,
whose fruit after all was only the assertion of the
safe principle that any de fdcto Government was
entitled TO our recognition and what am free to
call the less discreet declaration of what is known
as the Monroe doctrine, which some day may
bring forth bitter fruits. But amid all these sym
pathetic sentiments, no whisper was heard of the
necessity Of exorbitant action by the Government.
Down to this point at least our feelings were in
cned to be historical and Evolutionary. The
words of WAsHINGToN, his exhorta,ion, and his
example too, still were operative; not only our
memory but our heart retained them. We were
not ashamed to be conservative according to the
Washington rule. / fear things are now changing
for the worse.
Every now and then practical endorsements
occur which increase this liability TO and in
considerable action. Such was the case of the
Canada rebellion in 1888, and the Mcleod affair
such is the case with the present difficulty with
Spain about Cuba. But the coincidence cannot
have escaped notice that the same master mind
which ten years ago eKtricated US with honor from
one of these sympathetic perplextes, is destined,
if any thing can do it, 10 save from another Mr..
WEBSTER is peculiarly competent to accomplish
this. The writer Of this is not only no hot partisan
Of the Secretary of State. but has had occasion, with
regard local and personal politics. respectfully to
differ from him on recent occasions but point
like this involving craftsmanship in its highest sense
the craftsmanship that knows how 10 reconcile al
jealous sense of honor, always active and some
Times excessive in the popular mind, with sense
Of right and duty; the craftsmanship which COM
munes in theory with the examples and lessons of
the past, and yet has practical of what the
present shows and the probable future promises,
the nation feels that it is, SO far the diplomacy
of the United States is concerned safe in the hands
of Mr.. WEBSTER. 1t was once said, unkindy, OF
the present Prime Minister of England, tina, his pa
triotism was altogether "historical - that, though
he loved his country, il the country of history
and not of the living souls which peopled il. Not
American statesman /; for in him, at least as
much, il seems to me- as any one Of public men, can
be traced the reciprocal, practical influence of the
present and the past Nor does the country think
the worse of him because his patriotism and his
craftsmanship are historical. A mere sense of
what is going on around us is not enough. A
public man should be educated as Mr.. WEBsTERis,
under the examples Of the past.
hut. after all. what a statesman can do or can
avert depends more or less on popular sentiment;
and it is the strange perverson of popular feeling
now going on and observable around us. especialyin
this city and New York, that we have most reason
to depIore / repeat that the chronic enthusiasm
of Irish sympathizers does not give me, for one,
any serious cause for discomfort. It spends itself
very innocenhy. Not SO, perhaps, some other ex-
elements. See, for example, how these heresies
have grown in the last few months. When the
news first arrived of the invasion of Cuba and the
summary execution done on the captives, the first
explosion took place. Sympathy with Cuba start
ed out of the blood of these victims OF folly. The
most conservative presses here took up the cause
of sympathy. Not only the Evening Bulletin, a
highly respectable independent print, talked fierce
ly but the North American, generally discreet and
conservative lost its balance and talked war; too
This form was rendered harmless by being Carl
catured in the proceedings of town meeting called
and conducted by few restless and perverse poll
ticians of the EXTREMIST school. They rendered
The matter perfectly ridiculous. Yet it was at this
meeting that the idea was first preached that while
neutrality and non-ntervention might have been
once good policy, the time had come, or was COM
ing, when such oldfashioned notions should be
given up and we ought, for what is called the cause
of liberty, TO NEEDLE in foreign conflicts. Exactly
the doctrine of Mr.. Consul CRosKEY and Mr.
WALKER. so sl ea
This Cuban spasm temporarily over the next
cause of exorbitant sympathy was NJ KossUTH ;
land here it showed itself in more discredtable
tform. When, on what turned out TO be incorrect
information il was supposed that KossuTH and his
Tetinue had quarreiled with Captain Lone, so rash
md precipitate the foreign sentiment that was
at once assumed that our Officers were wrong and
tie foreigners rights and this for no conceive
abe reason, as il seemed to me, than that these fu-
gi,ives were foreigners. II now seems that the
whole story was a fabrication; and so much the
better We should rejoice at II, II for no other
reason than tina, il renders il unnecessary to min
gle with our welcome TO the strangers any censure
on our own gallant seamen. Diverted, however,
from this, our sympatbizers find conentment in the
speeches made by countrymen at the kossuth
correspondence in England. and the bope-for il is
hardly disguised-that our Executive Government