Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-02-15

OF more than half Of them ."Sixty years.
happily and truly says the Natchex Courier, " has
this Government been in operation without blot
upon its escutcheon. Rebellion has raised its
parricidal hand against it, and yet, after il had
crushed, il had the magnanimity to spare. For
eign war has tested its strength, and yet il tri-
umphed gloriously. Every debt has been liqui-
dated with scrupulous integrity. The poor SOL
der has been rewarded by substantial tokens of
gratitude, nor have the widow and orphan been
forgotten. Under its protecting @gs, our country
has been the refuge for the oppressed of every
land; the wilderness has been peopled, and two
mighty oceans united by the electric chain OF
liberty. In all these il has exhibited the attri-
'butes Of true greatness-justice, humanity, bene-
violence, gratitude, wisdom, and power. What
people ever enjoyed greater freedom than our
selves Z"
We do not doubt, indeed, that in the event of a
thing SO improbable (but supposedly as apeaceable
secession, the Government of South Carolina
will be disposed to enact of its own accord general
provisions for the protection Of the life, liberty and
property of the citizens, such as Revolution will
have deprived them Of. But when the authority of
the Government of the Union is thrown off, what
security is there for the stability Of such provsisns
or for the adherence of the new Government to its
own enactments! Who will /" keep the keeper :"
What power will protect the State against the
consequences of its own volatility!
1t is no secret that some (at leasD of the Dis
unionists, though they have not the common sense
to know when they are well, have yet shrewdness
enough to comprehend the advantage of having the
protecting aid Of some foreign Power. One of
the candidates for the Convention, in letter pub
lished last week under his own name in the news
paper of his district, deprecang as every way dis
astrous the project Of separate secession, takes
special exception to it, because (says hey South
:" Carolina as separate Government, circumstanced
Z" as she must be, a0iW be Mro,on inevitably into
/" the arms Of some po,oerfal EUROPEAN GOVERN
MENT, in colonial vassalage, or struggle on in
/" miserable and degraded existence, too weak to
|" protect her citizens or her honor in the contest
!" always going on between the strong and the
F." weak" Nor has it, indeed, been attempted to
be concealed, in the discussions Of this subject that
foreign alliance and support has been looked to by
those to whom the restraints and the guarantees of
the Government of the Union are equally obnox-
ious: and in all cases, without single exception
that we remember, Great Britain is the Govern
ment whose assistance is calculated upon.* But
what foreign Power-putting out of view the cer-
tanty of the acts involving it in war with the
United States-would accept the State as free gift,
as Colony, on condition of taking care Of it, and
protecting its institutions, that of slavery included,
against all enemies, internal and external? Great
Britain will be guilty Of no such folly. The de-
lusion, fermentation we may say, Of those who rely
against the consequences of Secession from their
own Government, is not, however, the less lament
able, because it is wholly unaccountable.
SECESSION itself, as we have remarked, abro-
gates instaneously all the rights and guarantees
which the Federal Government supplies for the
protection of the ife liberty and property of those
who live under it. All those checks and guards
which the existing Government of South Carolina
supplies for the same purposes are, by her recent
legislation, placed in almost equal jeopardy. The
careful reader will not have failed to remember the
terms on which all existing interests of the People
of South Carolina have been committed by their
State Legislature to the absolute will and discretion
of the State Convention that has just been chosen.
Omnipotent power is granted to it in the very terms
in which of old the Dictatorship was in great
emergencies called into being. The Convention is
to be held for the purpose, in the first place, Of
carrying out any act or acts Of the "Southern Con-
gress"-the meeting Of which seems now to be
wholly out of the question:" and for the further
purpose Of taking into consideration the general
Proofs Of this calculation upon British sympathy Brit
ish protection and British alliances abound in the news
paper essays and popular addresses of the woudbe Revo
lutionists We cite below few Of them which happen
be hand the reader will by seeing hese doubtless be
reminded of Others
FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE JANUARY (ls5O) NUMBER OF
DEMOCRATIC REVIEW.
The formation Of the cotton States i Cuba, into great
cotton tobacco sgarand producing Union, calling
forth the boundess fertility of Cuba, and enovang the West
India Islands with the labor of the blacks OF the Southern
States those hands in which their labor and numbers have
thrven WELL and THIS EMPIRE ANNEXED Britain, bv
treaties Of perfect reciprocity giving the latter the command
Of the Eastern by way of Nicaragua and all the
benefits Of possession without the responsibility of slave
ehp would be magnificent exchange for the useless pro-
vince of Canada. The separation Of the North from the
South under the embttered feelings which necessarily
exist before its possible consummaiop, sCoM off the
former from its supply rao materials, deprve its ships Of
totrds its business, close the whole Southern market
the sale Of lis wares shut up acories depopuate its
,chaucs and reduce speedily the present condition Of
Canada The possession Of the mouths of tue Mississippi