New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-06-04

We do not think it is in good taste for any
set of politicians to come the Nebuchldnez-
Ear upon the people of this country in this
style.
We imagine we shall be told in reply, by
the high priests of the Union Salvation, that
our Southern friends will kick up rumpus
directly if this law, should be touched with a
view to its repeal or modification; and that
forthwith another squall will brew in the sky
threatening to upset the Government. Well,
what do we care-and what upon earth do
the people care-about the alarm handful
of old fogies may feel and express, or the
fears their disordered fancies may engender,
if law pretending to e0mpos: O. the agita-
tons of the time should be threatened with
repeal or amendment The people of the
country are neither in go-cartS nor leading
strings, and take no counsel of such political
diettanti; though it would seem that some
folks-yea, many folks-Of the COnSerTa-
tive and Cotton schools would never dis
cover the fact. Luckily, those who have
the ultimate control of the affairs of this
country are not men who have govt in their
legs or cOrns on their toes and they there
fore feel no sickly aPprehensiOns of the
tramp of the crowd or an occasional jolt of
the great machine. The idea of preaching
the doctrine that the stability and perpetuity
of this great Union and Government depend
particularly upon embalming a law of the
last Congress, or combining it in glass case
to preserve it from the vulgar touch, we
reckon to be uncOmmOnly soft and partlcu-
larly verdant. Just as if the Government
cannot exist in years to come, as 1t has ex-
listed for sixty years back, without the saw
ing grace of the special legislation Of 1850
upon runaway blacks. The pretense that it
cannot is to our minds superlatiyely iejune
and contemplate.
We hate this simpleton cry of danger at
every little chop that arises on the great sea
of affairs. If anybody will turn back
through the history of this country, or any
other country where freedom of discussion
has existed, they will see how little atten-
ton should be given to all such idle appre
tensions. If we may believe what was well
sworn to at the time, we were a Red Repub-
lie of Infdels during Jefferson's time, with
a frst-rate prospect of being only renowned
in history as a second edition of SOdom and
GOmOrrah, enlarged and improved. In Mad
ison's day the country was clean gone to
dead ruin. We lived in a Military CONSOLE
dated Despotism under Gen. Jackson; and
we shall never forget the speech of the
Great Expounder at Worcester, during the
reign of Old Hickory, wherein was sketched,
at the close of that renowned effort, the most
frightful picture of impending desolation, to
come in the event of Gen. Jackson's reelcc
ton Let whose read it now and preserve
his gravity that can We were a boy then,
and could not well swallow the dose but it
was administered by one of the regular Fac
ultv, and we took it down We have since
learned to question human infallibility-
though in this we are, perhaps, open to the
imputation of extreme radicalism.
Yet Notwithstanding all our many ruins,
actual and threatened, the country is getting
on hourishingly, and that it will continue to
get on, without broken bone, we have no
doubt, whether the Fugitive Law stands, is
essentially modified, or totally repealed
We believe in the inherent vitality and vigor
of this Union and Government, for it is a
government of the People and in this, our
day and generation, it fully answers, in the
main, all the demands of every portion and
class who come under its light and beneficial
sway. The people who live under it may
not in all cases like the laws that are made,
but as they see no better mode of making
them than to give the power of doing it to
the majority, they will see them enforced
while they last. But the fact that one law
goes up or another goes down, will never be
considered serious cause in the minds of
the great mass of the people, for disrup-
ton of the Union and Government. An
overwhelming proportion of the people will
stand by the right of the majority TO make
the laws, and an equally overwhelming pro-
portion will stand by their exection. How
preposterous TO talk about the passage of this
law, or the repeal of that, endangering the
existence of the Government 1t is libel
on the country to intimate that there is any
tendency to such insanity among the people.
The SuGoIk Rank Svsteu aga;u