New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1854-11-08
HAVE you SEEM SAM >
Yes, ,ce have. He isn't good-looking, eithe
THE DOMINICAN CONSPIRACY.

1t ia one of the anomalies Of our government
that, though it is based upon a theoretic subjec-
ton t. the will Of the people-though the opin-
ion of the nation is taken upon all the minor econ
omies of tariff, postage, and the dOtation Of sala
ries yet in all important state policy affecting the
interests Of many generations involving the des-
TIMES and the lives of thousands of citizens, and
deeply duplicating the national character in the
moral estimation of the world, the people are not
only not consulted, but there is no provision in
the constitution under which it is possible 10 con-
suit them. The people are kept amused, playing
Uhig and Democrat, getting themselves very ex-
cited and very hot in the juggling game OF poll
tics, to see whether Seroggins or Muggins shall
sweep the spoils Of Office from the board, with
which to pay off their respective friends. Mean
time the government sit with closed doors, plot.
ting vast schemes Of sectional ACKNOWLEDGMENT,
and no more think of taking their subjects into
confidence than does conference of emperors at
Warsaw think of consulting their hireling soldiery
whether or not few thousand of them are viii
ling to be logged up to battery TO be shot, as is
put down for their part in the programme.
What popular sovereignty" was there for in
stance, about our late Mexican war; James X.
Polk, with all the executive and half the treaty
making power in bis hands, amused himself in the
recess of Congress by getting the United States
army into border fight with the Mexican, and
the lying pretense of an invasion, got supplies
Of money and men for war never declared. A
Mexican war was not ian issue" in the election;
it was not advocated on the stump; no legisla-
tive resolutions demandedit; 10 addresses poured
in from cities and great popular assemblies in ia
yor Of it. The people never dreamed of it. Aud
yet it proposed and involved the incorporation
people foreign to us in manners habits, and re-
ligion. 1t involved the taxation Of the peoples
industry for one hundred and fifty millions dol
lars; it made requisition upon fathers and moth
ers for the lives of ten thousand sons. 1t imph-
Gated a just and magnanimous people in the hs-
| torical disgrace Of great crime. Subsequently
the people were as little consulted in making
peace as they had been in making war. If the
oligarcby, whose tool Polk was, had insisted
| upon the whole instead of the half Of Mexico as
the condition of peace, or, if they had paid
hundred and fifty instead of fifteen millions for
the part they actually acquired, the people had
no constitutional power to interfere. In this
part of the system republic and despotism are
precisely alike.
The same Mr. Polk, it has been said, not off,
caly, for this is state secret kept an open offer
| to pay Spain hundred million dollars for Cuba;
and there ia an equally Unofficial on dit, that Mr..
Soult oi blsck velvet livery distinction has lately
taken TO Madrid banter OF twice that little sum
| for the tempting gem Of the Antilles. Neither of
these gentlemen proposed to disburse this pay
mobt from Lis own private fortune, or to take
Contributions from the pockets of the slave hold
iIg diplomats, or of the politico-commercih
Board of Slave Trade who had started the spec
ulation of the purchase to prevent the depreci-
| alton which SPsaish emancipation would efec. Of