Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-04-12

HE REVERENCE FOR Law, as the exponent of
the nations will, is that which peculiarly gives our
country its proud pre-eminence. 1t is the very
vital essence of our free institutions, without which
they could not endure for a moment. The Amer-
can people know something Of its worth indeed, but
they do not properly appreciate the immense ad-
vantage it has given them over every other nation.
They seem too generally to regard this sentiment
as sort of natural instinct, instead Of being one of
the very highest and rarest developments of the
human conscience and understanding. Because it
has been inborn and inbred in them, they deem it
spontaneous, not bearing in mind how much time
and how many influences it has taken in former
generations to establish and diffuse it. Its absence
is the chief reason why the civil history of the past
is mainly made up of the doings Of despots. In
ancient times the Greeks and the Romans alone pos
sessed it. As long they kept unimpaired, they
remained great beyond all approach; as they lost
it, they sank to the lowest impotence and degrada-
tion It is deficiency Of this sentiment that makes
the establishment of rational liberty in continental
Europe and in South America so difficult as to be
deemed by many utterly impracticable. Free gov.
ernment involves self-government; and sefgovcrn-
ment, in mans civil as in his personal capacity,
implies sefrestraint and selfsubmission to estab-
lished law. The very operation of the sentiment
we speak of shows the difficulty of its requirement.
1t reconcles personal freedom with public order /;
renders the sanctty of authority compatible with
the utmost liberty Of speech against those who
exercise it; opens every law in the land to
the severest apprehension, and yet requires it's
enforcement with the utmost rigor; exposes the
constitution itself to assault, and even, as we so
often see in our State Governments, tears it down
and builds it up again at pleasure, yet reyerences
the same constitution as paramount rule of action,
and denounces every one who lifts his hand against
it in an unconstitutional way, as public enemy
and traitor. Certainly a sentiment that can do
all this, and work from it the strongest, and yet the
freest system of government the world ever saw,
is thing of no common origin and no ordinary
worth.
At no time, probably, in the history Of our Re.
public, has the efficacy Of this sentiment been so
severely tested as at the present. A law has been
passed, which, however just and necessary indi-
vidually think it, is, in an unexampled degree, OBJ
noxious to very large number of the American
people. 1t has deeply moved the public conscience,
and has given shock to the public mind that the
London Times is hardly wrong in saying would
have shaken down half the thrones in Europe.
Itmaters not whether this strong feeling was reason
able or not it has been, and even now is, intense
ly active. But it is still absolutely poweress. The
lawrespecting, lawabiding spirit Of the people has
coerced it into complete subjection. 1t has just
iCCCNCu Oil cHcCtudi quctuS III tie very sPos WHeIc
the most vigorous exertons had been made to ex-
cite it to deeds Of violence In spite Of the furious
efforts of faction and fanatcism, and notwihstand-
ing the very general and very strong aversion to the
law in question, public opinion has every where
throughout the country manifested its purpose to
maintain it inviolate. No proof can be given
that worthy Of our free institutions, and no
better guaranty can be asked that those free nsttu
tons will prove perpetual.-N. Y. Cour. 9. Eng.