The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1852-03-30

d'affaires escaped ths necessity of a committing
answer!
The accomplished and truly sklfal gentleman
who now represents Great Britain near this re.
public would b. 10th to admit that his govern
ment had transcended it's privileges, or might,
under any circumstances, surrender the exercise
Of its assumed rights. Here was, you will nd
nit, Mr.. President, fit opportunity for this ad-
mnstration to display some Of that watchful
energy which it so mcrcilessly exhibited on
kindred occasion. Why is it that it suffered its
wrath to be so easily soothed and its suscepti-
bties to sumber What business had it 10 be
thus tolerant and accommodating when it had
+, pursued, with such an unrelenting rancor and
severity, that little band of deluded, but brave
and chivalrous men who had engaged in that
unfortunate and i'll advised expedition which end.
ed 80 miserably at Baya Honda Was it love
fur non-intervention that prompted the policy
which branded the invasion with deadly names,
and doomed the invaders to an ignominious
slaughter Sir, ! disapproved then, as disap-
prove now, the reckless undertaking but those
who engaged in it had stout and noble hearts );
they were NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS., it you choose
but enthusiasts -maddened by the most dis
interested and the most lofty aspirations What
right had this administration to track them
through the waters of the Gulf beyond the line
OF our municipal Jurisdiction? Will its friends
show me where, in the Constitution, is lodged
the power which the President thought proper
to exert on that occasion! And, as if the butch
cry made Of fifty of our citzens, slaughtered in
full daylight, within view of our flag waving
sadly over our ships ot-war, and ia wanton vio-
lation of the most solemn and the most explicit
treaty stipulations, was not enough to satsfy
| the most extravagant exactiOns of Castan
pride, Casi'ian punctilio, and Castilian revenge,
we are driven to witness, in the great metopo-
lis OF the South, the heart-rending spectacle of
salute booming out to exul,ing Spain, repent.
ance and atcnement in the name of the United
States of America. The triumph won by the
Spanish minister on this occasion over the sus-
capabilities, once 30 keen, of our statesmen, has
no precedent in the annals of the diploma c
history of any n,tion.
But to return to the present aspect of affairs
in Euro G, and to the new attitude ia which
England stands to the continental powers.
Believe you, sir, that she would now be so
humble, 50 detected, so submissive to Austro-
Russian dictation, if she had firmly stood up by
those principles which her Galatians and her
Cannings had 30 proudly proclaimed to the
world! How dearly she pays for her impas.
siveness, while the Roman republic was falling
under French bayonets, while Hungary was
slaughtered by Russian sabres, and while era
COW laid PROSTATE at the feet of her punderers
Sir, let us not be lulled into slumber by the
idea that we are too distant from Europe to be
affected by her political commissions. Know YOU
not that violence and oppression are contagious,
and that their triumph in any point of time, or
on any point of the globe, reacts on the moral
world?
Why, MIR. President speak Of isolation, when
you can ride your floating palaces from continent
to continent in less time than it took your
fathers, nifty years ago, to travel from Buffalo
to New York-from Boston to Philadelphia 3
when every wave OF the ocean brings you swift
messengers, blown over to these western shores
by the same breeze that waited them away
from the eastern hemisphere when, low as it
beats, you can hear every pulsation of the Eu-
ropean heart beneath the iron hands that strive
to compress and stife its languid and agonzing
energies?
But it is insisted that an expression of our
sympathes is more matter of sentiment than
OF right and policy. All, sir, pity the states
man who does not know that public sentiment,
which sometimes supplies and sometimes cor.
reefs the law, is always it's strongest support
Sir, believe me, it is our interest, and if not
our interest, our duty, to keep alive, by good
of ies among the nations of Europe, that rever
ence for the institutions of our country. that de-
vout faith in their efficacy, which looks to their
PRONUNCIATION throughout the world as to the
great millennium which is to close the long cal.
endar of their wrongs Let their fame light
up the gloom and dispe the darkness that now
envelop them. Humbled though they be, de.
spise them not. 1t was not their choice, but
treachery that made them slaves; and if you
should ask why is it that they seem to look
until Dxys, IL. L
the hands that brandish the rod over them, for.
get not those deuded wretches destined to the
beasts for the entertainment of the Roman En-.
perors, who could not be persuaded that Ce sar
was not Rome, and who, upon entering the
Coliseum, as they passed his seat, would bow
to him in respectful submission, and excaim |
Ca sar, morituri te salutant" -Cn sar, though
doomed to die, we salute you.
heard, the other day. the honorable Senator
from Tennessee, in one of those soul-stirring
feats ofeloquence peculiarly his own, d'sclaim
that there be anything like destiny in the call |
ings of nation. How could he have thus over
looked that there is nota work of Gods wisdom,
nor a striving of the manintellect, that bears
not the indelib!e seal Of destiny? Onward |
onward! is the injunction of Gods will rs much
as Ahead! ahead! is the aspiration of every
American heart. We boast exutingly of our
wisdom. Do we mean to hide it under the
bushel, from fear that its light might set the
world in flames AS well might Christianity |
have been confined to the walls of church, or
to the enclosures Of cloister. What had il |
effected for mankind, what had it effected for
ITSELF without the spirit that promulgate it to
the world Onward onward To stand still
is to lie lifeless-inertion is DEATH Had Ma
homet stood STILL would he and the mountain
have got together? Had the colonies stood
still, would this be the government it is ? Had
Jefferson and Polk stood still, would Louisiana
be ours? Would Texas, would California, sit
here in the bright garments of their sovereignty?
You commend the policy of the fathers Of the
republic, as if time, that wthers the strength Of
man, did not" throw around him the ruins of
his proudest monuments" Have | not shown
how mu'able it had been? Let us not calum.
Mate the past by fastening its usurpations upon
the future revere its teachings, but cannot
submit to make them the measures of present
wisdom. Speaking of the sages whose names
and authority have SO often been invoked in this
debate, the elder Adams attempts to exculpate