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current of excitement of such a nature; and since it cannot be averted, it is idle to complain of it as it would be weakness to shrink from it. The general good sense of the broad mass of the community may safely be relied upon to sustain it, in a course so unequivocally approved by all the rest of the country.

Two charges are, however, brought against it, under which those who approve and sustain its course can scarcely be expected to sit down in silent patience. The one is, that it is by a pusillanimous dread of the power of England that this course is dictated. The other, that it is prompted by, and implies, an antipathy to a cause of popular rights nearly analogous to that of our own Revolution, which would be repugnant to the first principles and natural sentiments of a true democracy. Both of these imputations are equally baseless, and equally inconsistent with the position distinctly assumed in the late general Message of the President.

In support of the former, we generally hear adduced the contrast between the vigor and efficiency displayed by the Government in the case of Canada and that of Texas,-in disregard of the obvious fact, that it was the very experience acquired in the case of Texas that pointed out the proper line of duty in the present; affording as it did a demonstration of the utter inadequacy of the then existing laws,—which it has been amply proved were enforced to the utmost extent possible. While at the same time was shown the success with which an actual war might be levied by individual enterprise, excited by the tempting allurement of a distribution of spoil and land, against a country to which we were bound by solemn treaty guaran-. tees of peace and friendship; the facility with which a successful invasion might be made of its territory, to make a revolution to which its own malcontent population was inadequate; and with which might be perpetrated with impunity a great national crime, which, whatever palliation we may find in circumstances, or whatever justification in success, the impartial pen of history must always record as nothing more nor less than what it has been well termed, the robbery of a realm.

But, unable as the weak and humble power of Mexico was in that case to prevent or punish the wrong done her, it is utterly untrue that our Government was under the least sinister influence from that consideration, to connive at the private war which was levied against her by a portion of our citizens, with such successful boldness as must certainly place it, for all time to come, at the very head of the record of American land-speculations. The existing laws were, as we have already insisted, and as has been amply shown elsewhere, carried into execution to the utmost extent possible. And not only was the necessity proved by that experience, of a greatly increased Executive energy, to enforce the neutrality which higher considerations were inadequate to cause to be respected, but in the present

instance the motives stimulating the Government to the utmost zeal and care were greatly increased, in the altered circumstances of the contest. In the former case the insurgent population consisted entirely of American citizens who had been attracted to settle in the country by the invitation of the Mexican government itself, accompanied with the guarantee of essential rights afterwards unscrupulously trampled on. That population was so directly connected by ties of blood, with our own people, that it was idle to attempt the vain task of stifling, or arresting by process of law, the feelings of nature which prompted thousands to rush to the rescue of the handful of their friends and relations, from what threatened to be a war of extermination. The vast extent of wild unexplored frontier between the two countries, rendering it impossible to interpose with any effect the unanimity and ardor of the public sentiment throughout all that part of the Union, which must have frustrated the strongest laws-the absence of the immediate danger of calling forth border retaliations, to embroil the government and plunge the country in a state of actual war-the fact that the province was in the unquestionable de facto possession of the insurgent population, and that it was impossible to enter into the intentions with which men might undertake to proceed to join them, whether those of the peaceful emigrant, or the military adventurer-certainly the candid observer must recognize, in the contrast presented between this combination of circumstances, and that existing on our northern frontiertogether with the benefit of the experience already adverted to-an ample explanation of the difference observable in the action of the Government in the two cases.

So far as fear of war is concerned, we are well convinced that such an apprehension is no more to be entertained in the case of England than it was in that of Mexico. For why should we fear such a war? We are surprised that any man of sense could entertain the idea. It appears to us too plainly evident to call for proof, that England would not, durst not, could not, engage in such a war. She is more, far more, dependent on us, in a commercial and industrial point of view, than we on her. The day of England's palmy pride and power has begun sensibly to decline-never in all probability to dawn again. The world is no longer, as in former years, dependent on that prodigious steam power of manufacturing industry and skill which she was able, by the start early given her by the moral advantages of her liberal institutions, and the long general wars that harassed and devastated the rest of Europe, to concentrate within her narrow rock-bound limits. Her monopoly is beginning to be broken up, and England is no longer the common workshop of the world. The other nations are now manufacturing for themselves. The modern developement and diffusion of sci

ence, and of the principles of political economy, has vastly curtailed, and is daily diminishing, her advantages over other nations; while the heavy clogs and disadvantages which a fearful accumulation of misgovernment has gathered around her, are beginning to make themselves sensibly felt, in the open competition to which the general peace that has so long prevailed subjects her.

In the progress of manufactures in other natious, the mine is rapidly advancing and spreading, that is sapping the foundations of that stupendous but hollow pyramid of greatness and wealth. And as for the artificial stimulus of paper-money, which has so long sustained her in her magnificent career of power and splendor, she has already used it to the utmost; and from its nature, when once strained and exhausted, as it has been in this instance, it can never be available again. She has already borrowed about four thousand millions of dollars of posterity, on paper credit, and not only can she borrow no more, but an awful murmur is beginning to rise from the vast and dark depths of her oppressed millions, questioning the rightfulness and lawfulness of that debt already contracted, or rather imposed, and impeaching it as essentially vitiated by fraudthe worst of frauds, a fraud against a nation. Men are already beginning to tremble and quake at that boding sound which is slowly spreading and swelling upward, till it is destined to break forth in thunders of the righteous wrath of a people, and to consummate a sublime act which shall forever remain a memorable example to nations and their rulers.

Thus situated, can any one suppose such a thing possible as a declaration of war on the part of England against the United States? Suppose the case, that, in the contest between the government and the malcontents in the Canadas, we had followed the precedent recently set by England herself in the case of Spain, and frequently on former occasions; and, without taking sides-as a government, wielding the national resources and national arms—with either party, had folded our arms, declaring it hostile to the genius of our institutions to interfere with the freedom of the citizen, and had allowed both parties to collect and organize recruits and means within our territories ad libitum, and to go and fight out their battle on their own soil as they best might,-could England have pronounced it just cause of war? She, at least, plainly could not; and an attack on her part would have been a war of aggression. And for what object? To maintain at the point of the bayonet an expensive, inglorious, and really mutually disadvantageous, colonial dominion over an unwillling people. Would an English government, bound over as it is (in Canning's well known saying) in eight hundred millions of pounds to keep the peace, dare to venture upon such a war? And if they should, would the English people, the Radical millions-aided in this instance by the coincident interest of the

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moneyed commercial, and manufacturing influences,—for a moment tolerate the idea? To both questions we can have no hesitation in returning an equally unequivocal negative. And moreover, it is manifest that the very act would be the instant signal for the emancipation of the Canadas, and probably all her other North American colonies-the preservation of which is supposed as the very object of such a war.

Some of the Patriots themselves urge these considerations on us, as decisive that we can have nothing to apprehend on this score, but rather every thing to gain. They are right in their premises, but mistaken in supposing us ignorant of them, or insensible to their force. They would also be right in their inference, of what would be the natural course for us to adopt, if they were addressing their arguments to one of the old European powers whose political systems, and principles of policy directing their foreign relations, were essentially different from ours. They may put the case (an impossible one, but still an imaginable one) of the relative attitudes of the two countries being reversed, and ask, whether England would pursue a similar course to enforce a rigid non-interference, on the part even of the individual, citizen, to the extent adopted by us. And we are willing frankly to answer, that we do not believe she would. Yet does not that admission affect in the least degree the grounds on which we stand; nor impugn the determination to which we are led, taking counsel only of our own honor, our own good faith, and the consecrated and invaluable principles of our own system of foreign policy.

'The first principles of our foreign policy-the only ones-are peace and good-faith. We are a commercial and industrious people, and all we have to desire is freedom of trade, on the principle of reciprocity, undisturbed by any entangling connection, direct or indirect, avowed or implied, with the difficulties and agitations, whether internal or external, of foreign nations. For this purpose we recognize all governments de facto, and treat them with one uniform rule, whether they chance to be the most despotic of tyrannies, or the freest and happiest of republics. Nor ought we to be tempted to a deviation from it, in any instance, by the ardor of approbation and sympathy which the cause of the one party or the other in any domestic struggle may awaken, from the harmony of the principles on which it may act, and the objects it may pursue, with those most devoutly consecrated in our hearts by our own past history and present experience. Neutrality-noninterference-in one case as in another-must be our motto; and that not in a mere formal and hollow sense, but truly, substantially, practically, and above all in good faith.

And here occurs one of the peculiar distinctive characteristics of our institutions, in contrast to those of other countries. Our govern

ments being all founded on the principles of free consent and the supremacy of the popular will, no such distinction exists with us as with others, between the people and the government; nor can there be an opposition of duties between them. The laws being freely made and modified by the will of the people, a moral obligation to sustain and carry them out is incumbent on the citizen which is not the case where the elements of force and arbitrary power enter into the legislation and government of the country. Every citizen is, under such institutions, not indirectly but directly, a component member of the state; and every duty incumbent on the latter, as a combined and organized whole, ought to be regarded as not less sacred to the former, as one of the constituent parts of which the whole is made up. This duty, then, of non-interference, which no one calls in question on the part of the Government, is plainly equally imperative on the individual; and its violation is a crime of very grave complexion, for which no degree of generous ardor in a cause deemed worthy of such enterprise, can be recognized as affording a sufficient excuse. How much stronger the argument in those cases in which the exciting motive-widely different from the noble impulses of a Lafayette or a Kosciusko— may haply be but a cool calculation of a division of confiscated spoil, or an allotment of conquered public domain.

If this duty is disregarded by any considerable number of citizens, under the influence of either of these motives, or any combination of the two, it is clearly an obligation from which there can be no honorable escape, on the part of the Government, not only to enforce its observance, to the utmost extent possible, but to discountenance and suppress the spirit from which such improper agitation proceeds, by every means that may seem necessary to that end, within the scope of its constitutional powers. And this obligation is entirely independent of the nature of the contest whose vicinity may naturally give rise to such an excitement; and would be not less operative whether the current of popular sympa- . thy should set in favor of the one side or the other, in the struggle between established civil and military authority, and the efforts of rebellion to cast off its ascendency.

There is no escaping from the force of this argument. It is one of the highest of duties on the part of our Government to prevent this criminal interference with the domestic concerns of a foreign Power with which we are not only at peace, solemnly guaranteed by the sanctity of treaties, but with which it is one of our most important national interests to maintain that relation. If bound to neutrality between the two parties to the contest, it has no right to stand neutral between them and its own citizens, so as to allow the latter unrestrained license to participate in it; and thus to provoke retaliations, from the one party or the other, the immediate effect

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