Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1863-10-01

as to the avowed policy Of the President under
this head, and all who oppose or dispute it, do SO
with the full knowledge that they make themselves
Observation-Disclosures. The Executive and Lee
gislative Departments of the Government have,
since the outbreak Of the war down to the present
time, continuously and uniformly acted the the
DRY that all ordinances of secession legal null
lities, and that the States in the insurgent district
had their rights and relations to the Constitution
and the Union In no wise destroyed by such pre-
tended acts, but that those rights and relations
have been simply, as the President properly de-
scribes it, suspended or disturbed" by the vio-
lence Of faction and war. Any other theory con
cedes the whole matter in dispute between the Co.
vernment and the insurgents, and makes over the
palladium of the latter into the hands of the for
mer As is well said by friend Of the Admins
tration, Mr.. Coombs, in speech delivered before
the Union League Of this city:
Our Government is and has been ever since this re-
beon has existed daily doing acts which recognise in the
most unequvOca manner the rebeli0us States still be-
ing members of the Federal Union We accord to the
loyal citizens of those States all the rights, privileges
franchises and mmunites of citizens of the United States
We appoint them Offices which but citizens the
United States eligible to fill. We accord to them
other rights which none but citizens Of State in the
Union entitled to under the Constitution among
which the right Of representation Congress whenever
and wherever they find themselves able exercise that
right BY electing' members If they are STILL in law
States of this Union then it ia impossible for the remain
ing States to modify the Constitution except uncon
situtiona way, and that would be simply revolution"
The people of Tennessee, says Mr. Whiting, are
oil public enemies, and Tennessee, as State,
has ceased to exist. And yet portion of the peo-
pie of Tennessee were represented in the last Con-
gross. The people of Louisiana are all indiscrimi
natey, by virtue Of territorial civil war;" no
thing less than public enemies, and Louisiana, as
State, has ceased to exist. And yet almost the
closing act of the last House of Representatives
was to admit two members of Congress chosen from
two Congressional districts in this State. The
people of Virginia, says Mr. Whiting, are all pub
lie enemies, and Virginia, as State, has ceased
to exist. And yet the last Senate embraced on its
roll the names Of two Senators from Virginia, and
the House of Representatives embraced among its
members good and loyal men who sat among their
fellow-membersas accepted delegates from Virginia
And, as if to explode both the practical and theo-
retical absurdity of this whole secession dogma,
as adopted by the advocates of the theory which
obterates State lines the last Congress, by most
solemn act, ratified the measures taken by the Le-
gisature of Virginia (sitting at Wheelng) for the
erection of new State within the jurisdiction Of
that State. The constitutional provision under
which this Congressional assent was given is in the
following words:
Nav ha h.
Union but no State shall be formed or erected with
in the jurisdiction of any other State nor any State be
formed by the junction of two States ,oo the
consent at the Legislatures Of the States concerned as e
as ofMe Congress"
If Virginia, as State, has ceased to exist, then
the action of Congress in ratfyipg the proceedings
of the so-called Legislature Of Virginia." which
purported to give consent to the partition of the
State, was not only fraud but legal impossible
ty And all who voted for that measure, as well
as the President who approved it, are, by neoes-
sary implication, according to the logic of Mr.
Whiting and his coadjutors, guilty of having con-
frmed the action of "public enemies" for the
Legislature at Wheeling assumed to be, and were
admitted by the Congress and the Executive to be,
"the Legislature Of Virginia." And now, in the
face of this proceeding, there are those who would
stultify the members of the last Congress and the
President himself by affirming that the territorial
civil war has "obliterated State lines" and that
Virginia. a, State had ceased to exist at the very
time when what purported to be her action was ra
tilted by the Legislative and Executive Depart
ments of the Government
We are, therefore, fully warranted in holding all
who espouse this revolutionary doctrine to be the
enemies of the Administration, as they must ne.
cessary be the enemies Of the country, if they are
the "aiders and abettors of the Confederates I"
AS such we esteem them, and as such we shall treat
demonstrating the Administration, as far as we
are able, from the odium brought upon it by some
in public and official place, who do not scruple to
advocate this administration doctrine, and
defending the Constitution from a dogma which,
in its very statement, betrays the cause of the
Union by identifying its confes,ors with the Con-
feierates" whose dialect they speak and whose in.
surgent violence they morally aid and abet j"
LEGAL TENDER NOTES CONSTITUTIONAL.
The Court of Appeals oil the State Of New York. now il
session at Albany has decided that the legal tender notes