Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-11-12
THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL.

The Union of Tuesday replies at considerable
length to some remarks of ours ON Saturday last,
respecting the gratuitous imputations in which it
habtually INDUCES against all foreign Govern
ments, and especially against England -imputatons,
coupled with coarseness of manner unbecoming
the reputed organ Of our Government, and which
it should leave to what it calls the rude Dcmocra-
tic instincts" of its unofficial conductors.
/ The Union replies to us by repeating its injurious
imputations on a friendly Government with the adj
dition of some stereotyped personalities towards
ourselves These latter we have never thought
worth noticing, even when aimed with much more
vigor than the Union exerts. We pass them by
now, as heretofore, as belonging to those rude in
stincts" which appear to be incurable. On the
main point at issue between us we beg to offer
brief rejonder, which we should have paid our
semi-offcial contemporary the respect of doing in
our yesterdays number but that more
agreeably employed the day before.
We should be sorry to think that the motives and
impulses of the National Integencer were not bet
ter understood, not only by I" its own political
friends" but by the rejecting and moderate portion
of the party in power, than they to be by the
organ of the Administration The point at issue
between the Union and ourselves, and the only
point so far as we have been concerned is whether
it was just or prudent or polite in this Govern
ment to interfere with the action of any foreign
Government in matters which could not by any pos
sbiy be made to infringe upon the rights belonging
to us as an independent nation. We endeavored to
show, as it regarded Cuba, that the British nego-
tators in the proposed tripartie treaty could have
had no other design than the one held out, namely
to secure to Spain the peaceable possession of that
island and that they would not have dared, in the
face of their instructions the subject, to enter
tain the double design attributed to them, because
such duplicity would have inevitably led to expo
sure and disgrace. We did not attempt to refute
the historical statements of the Union in regard to
the "present condition" of Cuba, because the truth
or falsehood of those statements had nothing what
ever to do with the question between us: and we
professed our belief that it was not the moral or
physical condition of the people of Cuba, but its
condition possession of Spain that the British
Government desired to conserve. For this we are
accused of "refned Jesuitism" and of being in the
suspicious society of the correspondents and agents
of the London Times" This imputation, if it had
not appeared in the columns of the official paper,
we should regard trash and pass it by in silence
We have never been the advocates of any foreign
Government in any question in which the rights of
our own were involved. Our country, we trust,
gives more charitable construction than the Union
to our humble efforts to show the distinction be-
tween the universally acknowledged inherent right
of every independent nation to manage its own af
fairs in its own way, and the assumed right which
has been zealously maintained by that journal to
interfere with other Governments in the exercise of
the same inherent right. If we have evinced an
anxious desire to counterfeit what the Union desig-
mates the rude Democratic instincts of the land
it is because we have thought that their natural
tendency was to overstep the limits of national
rights and of moral and political justice, and thus
to give color and excuse to the aggressons of other
nations To preserve the honor, integrity, and con-
sistency of our own Government untainted by the
greedy appetite for acquisition, which we discern
systematic intention on the part of the Government
organ to stimulate and FOSTER has been the sole OBJ
ject of all that we have said in our controversy
with that paper. We will not consent to see our
Government placed in the wrong to escape the OBJ
loquy of political adversaries and we have used
our humble efforts to keep it right in all information
rl questions, even at the expense of malevolent
msconstruction Of our own motives
The Union confesses to " a fondness for finding
itself backed up by THOMAS JEFFERSON" and
hopes to be "pardoned for bringing that great
Democratic champion once more on the stand.
Hear Continues the Union) what he says about
English treaties with NC IS to her Lore of us,
as to the motives which impel her against us,
and the dangers which drive her back" We our
selves have respect for the authority Of Mr.. JET
PERSON, formed and cherished since period long
before modern progressive and aggressive Democra-
cy or flhbuster Democracy were born or dreamed Of
Let us see, therefore, if cur views are not also
"backed up" by him, and by sentiments Of his
more recently expressed than those quoted by the
Union. As late the year 1928, when the ven-
cradle statesman had retired from the busy scenes
and turmoils of political life in letter to Prcsi-
dent MONROE, he spoke as follows
Great Britain is the nation which can do us more
harm than any all other nations on earth and
with her on our side do not fear the whole world
With her, then, should zeaously cherish cor
dial friendship and nothing would tend more to bind
affection than to be fighting side by side in
the same cause not that would procure her amity
at the price Of taking part in her wars but the war in
which the present propositions might engage us is not
her own but ours"