Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1854-10-07

A Massachusetts, friend Of Mr.. Senator SUMNER
having called our attention to the fact Of gross
personal imputation against that gentleman, con-
tanned in an article copied from distant paper into
the National Intelligoncer Of the Both fast month";
we consider it due no less to ourselves than to Mr..
SUMNER to state that until thus advised of it the
Editors Of this paper were entirely unaware of such
reflection upon him having appeared in its CO
lumns, Approving of the object and general rea-
soning as cursorily perused, of the article which
contained it, entirely overlooked the passage in
question, which the attentive reader will doubt
less remember, wherein Mr. SUMNER is character
lied, in very offensive terms certainly, as " bra
zen-faced Abolitionist." Had this passage not
wholly escaped our observation, it would undoubr-
eddy not nave obtained currency in the National
Intelligencer.
Terms so opprobious as those referred to are sell
dom admitted into its columns, and more seldom
still, if ever, employed by the Editors. Towards
the Senator from Massachusetts, such language
could not be justified by any thing within our per-
sonal knowledge. In common with most of his coun-
trymen of the North he is doubtless a thorough
anti-slayery man but he is not an Abolitionst, in
the understood sense of the term. He has never
proposed and we presume it has never entered into
his head to interfere with the relation of slavery in
the States or Territories within which it has law
full existence With the implicit respect and de-
ference which we consider ourselves owing to the
Constitution of the United States his opinion and
ours of the obligations in relation to the exterior
rights of those States and Territories in regard to
IL m darc
know, wide as the Poles asunder. But we are bound
to admit that, in his most excited discourses in
the Senate on this subject-that is on questions
affecting these rights-as vel in his general per-
sonal intercourse, ESQ far as are informed,) he
has not been in the habit IT tiansgressing the
bounds Of parliamentary law the requirements Of
courtesy and good-breeding.
Thus much for the present in explanation Of the
inadverten injustice done to the Senator from Mas
sachusetts.
In our views Of the obligations of the Constitu-
ton of the United States upon all who live under
it, differing SO widely they do from those Of the
honorable Senator, there is no particular in which
they differ more materially than in the resort which
he had in the late debates in the Senate to the obter
dictu of President JACKSON, affirming his right to
support the Constitution as he understood it, and
not as it was understood by others, and affirming
especially his independence in this respect, both Of
Congress and the Supreme Court. To this revival
Of an obsolete pretension by the speech Of Mr..
SUMNER in the Senate on the 2sth day of June
last, we should have then taken occasion to express
our decided dissent had not other engagements in
terfered Seeing, however, that it has been more
recently re-afirmed, with even greater emphasis,
in speech by the same gentleman at political
Convention in his native State, we propose yet to
notice it in its most important bearings, and shall do
so in future paper.