CIVIL DISCORD DUTY-FREE. "If the base flatterers of despotic power rise up against my principles, I shall have on my side the virtuous man, the friend of the laws, the man of probity, and the true citizen." VATTEL, Law of Nations, Preface. North and West, it means to equalize those regions with potato-growing Ireland. This coalition between the blood-thirsty zealots of Exeter Hall, and the gold-thirsty capitalists, whose servants at home are the House of Commons and the Whig Ministry of England, is represented in America by an infamous secret League between the enemies of native industry and the disunionists of the North and West,-properly speaking, the friends of America and the dupes of English merchants,-in brief, the AMERICANS and the FLUnkeys. WE have already congratulated the friends of the Union, and of Republicanism in general, on the happy coalition that is being effected between the enemies of American enterprise and industry, and those who intend the violent emancipation of the negroes. This coalition has been brought about through the combination of the same elements of reaction in England. The absolute necessity felt by English manufacturers of checking the industrial enterprise of the Americans; the new alarm raised by the sudden appearance of new forms of industry in the South; the mortal decline of production in the West In furtherance of her one grand scheme Indies, caused by the superior facilities of of monopolizing the trade of the world, Southern production; the wonderful inge- England, as all the world knows, employs a nuity and success of American artisans, in system of diplomacy the most powerful conthe construction, economy, and navigation ceivable. A feeble State, or union of States, of steam vessels and merchant ships; the like the Central American, or the Columbian enormous mineral wealth of California; the (S. A.) Union, adjoining it on the south, at rapid settlement and splendid prospects of the suggestion of a British agent, borrows the Pacific territories; the probability of a a great sum from English capitalists. The speedy reflux of the golden tide from Lon- day of payment arrives, and it becomes difdon to New-York, moving the centre of ex-ficult to refund. A man-of-war is sent to change for the world's wealth; the newly-enforce payment, or, instead of that, to deawakened sense of the American people to the means used by Great Britain to extend her empire, and make herself master of the industry of all nations,-all together have roused up in the breast of that company of titled merchants called the English Government, a vague feeling of alarm, ill disguised under an exterior of haughty and contemptuous commendation. The philanthropy of England, by way of reparation for the dreadful expenses and disasters which it has brought upon her colonies, has struck a league of amity with the commercial interest, and "by the hair of the dog will cure the bite;" by extending the blessing of servile insurrection from the West Indies over the Southern United States, it wishes to place them upon a level with Hayti and Jamaica, by destroying the manufactures of the mand a foothold on the territory, or a monopoly of trade, or both, the one serving the other. By this system, as well as by creating civil dissensions, and breaking up the unions of States, and overpowering and crushing them in detail-as in South America and Central America-or by the establishment of protectorates of, and alliances offensive and defensive with, sovereigns of bad faith and bad title, as universally in India, and in Central America,-English diplomacy, supported by English arms, has consolidated an immense empire, of which the entire power is concentrated upon the single purpose of enriching and strengthening the merchants of Great Britain, and their dependents, the Court, the Peerage, and the Church E-tablishment. A system of "assurances," a pretended regard for and steady violation of the law of nations, is the chief defense thrown up, behind which the sappers and miners of English diplomacy carry on their grand siege against the independence of every nation on the face of the earth; a warfare against the wealth, industry, and liberty of the entire human race. Their empire continues to expand, and within a few years has moved its boundary, like the shadow of an eclipse, over the southern extremity of North America. The power absolutely held by this tremendous organization as far exceeds that of Cæsar or Alexander, as the commerce and the military skill of modern nations exceed those of antiquity; but it is a power resting upon a rotten foundation, namely, upon the mistaken veneration, charity, and trust of other nations—a commercial, speculative power, that has grown gradually by the observance of that grand modern rule of conquest-"Create a want, and the means to supply it, and you are so far a master; create an obligation which cannot be cancelled, and under the pretense of enforcing it, you may subdue and enslave." On either side of England stand two nations, each superior to her in absolute force and resource, inferior to her only in extent of power: on the right Russia, the Sclavonic Despotism on the left America, the Empire of Republics. Governed by a powerful and exclusive aristocracy, England is naturally hostile to a despotism, in which every form of sovereignty centres in the person of an autocrat, a government without aristocratic legislation, and controlled by no interest of class, but in which the one interest and controlling motive is the glory of the empire, represented in its head. Empires naturally and necessarily absorb the territories adjoining them. The epoch of their decline is the moment when they cease to do this. Their decline is preceded by civil wars. In the absence of a foreign policy, the American Empire, like the Russian and the British, falls into hostile parties within its own boundaries, and its Union is endangered. Let the attention of the people and the Government be turned upon territories adjoining, whose inhabitants look to it for protection against hostile and uncongenial powers the spirit of internal discord will be stilled by the sense of nationality, and the enthusiasm of military and commercial enterprise. It is the glory and transcendent virtue of the Constitution of the American Empire, that the States which it absorbs come eagerly and willingly into its embraces. While it defends and secures, it does not oppress. It is a system of inviolable sovereignties. The highest privilege that can be accorded to a people is the guarantee of the American Union. The secret of its power and popularity, and of the hatred it excites in the bosom of despots, is the free and absolute protection offered by its powerful Constitution to those feeble, half-formed governments which are continually springing up around it, and asking admission within its pale. With such a power the British Empire is placed by nature in a strict antagonism. An empire whose protection is sought by no nation that reveres its own laws and institutions, that accords liberty to none, that destroys the individual sovereignty of all, that centralizes, and oppresses, and exhausts, by consolidation; that conquers and subdues to absorb; that destroys the industrial liberty, the commerce, and the pride of all; that forces all into a position of subordination; whose government is an engine of extortion: such an empire is necessarily hostile and antagonistic to an armed empire of free States, equal rights, and equal representation. For what should the wars of an empire founded upon the liberties of States be undertaken, if not for the protection of those liberties? The first grand war carried on by the people of America, was against the imperial system of the French King, whose efforts to extend his power over the valley of the Mississippi failed before the valor and heroic enterprise of the colonists of New-England and Virginia. The second was against the imperial system of Great Britain, which she vainly endeavored to extend over the thirteen colonies of the Confederation. The third was against a second effort of the same power to exercise an imperial sway upon the ocean, to the detriment of American commerce. The fourth, the war in Mexico, begun in error, ended in a withdrawal of our armies from the limits of a conquered State, and in the purchase of a territory virtually and by the law of arms our own. Every war, whether begun in justice or in error by the people of America, has resulted in a confirmation of the rights of individual sovereignties, and the withdrawal of all arbitrary and despotic pretensions. After the peace with Mexico the war moved itself to the Capitol, and there ended in the glorious triumph of the last session, by which the freedom of Internal Legislation was secured for ever to the people of the States and Territories by the series of measures for the security of State Rights, and consequently of the Union, offered by HENRY CLAY, whose glory it is to have become the second saviour and founder of the Union. May this venerable and illustrious champion of the Rights of States, this representative of the Laws of Nations, live to see the principles he has defended, and the rights he has established, extended over the entire continent, protecting the industry and the liberty of the great American brotherhood of Republics; may he live to see the people of these United States awakened, roused to a sense of duty and of honor, and ready to vindicate the rights of nations and the Sovereign liberties of States, not only within the limits of the Union, but on those adjoining territories whose inhabitants cherish a respect for the American name, and an enthusiastic affection for Republican liberality and sincerity. With what degree of respect and affection the American Empire is regarded in England we may understand from the following. In the London Morning Chronicle of February 1st, 1848. Mr. P. P. Thompson, M. P. of Eliotvale, Blackheath, England, published in a letter the sentiments of a powerful party in England, which exhibits the native rancor of English oligarchy, and the bitter counsels they take together for our ruin "A partially successful war of invasion appears to have changed the habits and feelings of the predominant portion of Americans. Rome and her glories stand before them in prospect, with always this difference, that the Roman warred to civilize and combine, and the American to brutalize and destroy. There has been no such phenomenon in the antecedent history of mankind, as the rise of a conquering power, based on the avowed abrogation of human rights. This is a sweeping scheme of the descendants of our negrodrivers against three-fourths of the family of man. The slave-breeding mind has conceived the idea of conquest, to which, in its own words, the suc cesses of Rome are to be child's play. It is clear that England must take one side, when her enemy takes the other, that she must take the lead in the This Mr. P. P. Thompson is a worthy duplicate of his fellow, G. P. Thompson, the British emissary of Free Trade in America. If we are rightly informed, P. P. Thompson, the author of the above, is a Tory of the old school, and wealthy; while G. P. Thompson, the free-trader and abolitionist, is a radical so called, and a needy adventurer supposed to be in the pay of England. Both are, or have been, members of Parliament, and, if our information is correct, represent the two sides of British opinion, which converge and agree upon the ruin of the Union. Encouraged by her success in the destruction of the Columbian (S. A.) and Central American Republics, enterprises intrusted to her subordinate agents, Great Britain, in the person of her man of all mischief, Lord Palmerston, comes to her next grand operation, the dissolution of the Union of the greater States, and the simultaneous annihilation of the Northern industrial and Southern negro interest. The first branch of this mighty enterprise recommends her to the affection of our Southern, and the second to that of our Northern agitators. She comes to the work prepared with a pertinacity of purpose, and a steadiness of aim worthy of the deed, and of her ancient. and inextinguishable hatred, and with agents. more subtle and sagacious than any ever before sent from England. which The work is cut out among them. Her Public Minister has one part,-it is his duty to accomplish the ruin of particular men and a particular party-the sole party from any active opposition, or national hostility to England was to be expected. For what he has already accomplished in this work of ruin, a peerage doubtless awaits him at home; for surely a more accomplished agent of evil never left the Diplomatic Hell of Downing street. The minor tools have their inferior tasks, but not less necessary. One is to encourage slave-stealing and preach free trade; another is to cajole a Disunionist Convention; another is to write, a fourth (for love) to preach a new kind of British piety; a dozen more to go | send out her valiant sons to die under the about cajoling and privately frightening edi- guns of " honest people," of honest Britaintors, inducing them to publish lying reports honest at Copenhagen-honest at Hong and "assurances." Meanwhile the entire Kong-honest over all the continent of Hinnew continent is flooded with British opin- dostan-honest in Spain-honest in Naion through the piratical press, to the utter ples-honest in Texas-in Central Amerextinguishment of national sentiment, and ica-honest at Bunker's Hill and Groton the impoverishment of those natural guar- Heights, at Concord and Lexington, with dians of our rights and honor, American a vengeance !-honest everywhere, my writers; these watch-dogs of Republi- Lord! And certainly your cannon have an canism are as effectually muzzled by our honest, open look about the mouth, and an system of literary free trade, as the French honester set of extortioners and agitators press by the decrees of the Emperor Presi-were-never. You thrive by protectorates dent. Everywhere, everything is British: and reciprocity, and prosper by new styles of trade is British; legislation is British; piety and the spread of Humanitarian princibooks are modern British; the press is ples. You scatter your fire-brands in the most in large part British; the South grows honest, unconscious way, and an honester British; the North forgets Bunker Hill and more polite diplomacy, a more lovely and stamp duties, and grows British with and open-hearted Machiavellism than yours, Abolition rancor. News are of British history knoweth not. Were the Americans aggressions, and of British intrigues; of a nation of usurpers in the modern sense, British-made famines in Ireland, and Brit- they need not go back to Rome for a study ish-made wars in India; of British bom- of principles and practice in the art of bardments in China, and of British seizures" brutalizing and destroying" the nations of at the Isthmus; of three per cent. duties sus- the earth. Wretched India; degraded and pended by the grace of Britain, (as if to miserable Ireland, once free and happy; missuspend did not imply a power to impose ;) erable China, drugged with the cup of Britof citizens of the United States very hu-ish abominations, reeling drunk with the poimanely treated by the grace of Britain, their son of that apothecary-Shylock, the British arms only being taken from them; (who gave opium merchant, whose pound of flesh is Britain the right or power to "treat" cit-by-and- by, as in India and Ireland, to be izens of the United States on the free territory of a neighbor Republic in any fashion, humane or inhumane?) Violations of treaties, and of the laws of nations, are all British; the growth of empire is British. The most conspicuous and noticeable person in America, and by some supposed the most influential, is the British Minister, working for a peerage as his reward for the destruction of the party hostile to British violence, bad faith, free trade, mock humanity, mock liberality,-hostile by nature and necessity to everything anti-national, anti-republican, anti-American." Before God, are the American people grown altogether British? or is all this only a temporary eclipse of reason and affection? Incredible as the silliness and flunkeyism is, of those who favor and sustain this state of things, weak human nature might be pardoned, were it not in this instance a selfdestroyer as well as a fool. Bitter, bitter calamities await a people false to themselves and false to their destiny. English members of Parliament "hope" that America will exacted at the cannon's mouth-these are our modern examples. With poison (twenty millions' worth a year,) with fire-brands (sent to America,) with daggers and ropes, (the bayonets and halters of police in Ireland,) with gold, (bribes or flattering "assurances," freely offered the wide world over, to all who work for England, to vacillating editors in America, to a servile press in France and Spain, to merchants and legislators, priests, littérateurs,) with poison, halters, bayonets, bribes, and universal lies, smooth speeches, dinners and intrigues-the glorious Empire of the British Merchant has been wrought out and built up heaven-high, and overlooks and threatens-us. The Janus-faced traitor, the tool of England here, offers "free trade" to the South, and gives secret assurances to "Abolition" in the North. Magnetized with English gold, or with assurances, or, more potent still, with the native sympathy that exists between a flunkey and a lord, the active and willing agents of our "enemy," as one of her own sons has made her, nor are rations of justice. To make a treaty that can be broken without danger is the art of our time, and upon ourselves that art has been successfully practised. "The re we so backward in the common spirit of men, so devoid of "English pluck," as to deny the soft impeachment,-disseminate two sets of principles among us, mortal to the Union and to Republicanism-mortal to the "ene- Under the late administration of a party my" of the British lords-merchant, to the uni- whose name accords but ill with its princiversal lords-merchant and taxers of all man- ples or practice, Mr. Bancroft went to Engkind, taxing our very thoughts, taxing the land, the protector there for the people of highway of nations between the two oceans, the United States, not only of their rights, or what is worse, haughtily suspending but of the rights of nations. Let himself "temporarily" a tax which they had no right be the witness how he fulfilled his trust. Acto impose, and "only disarming" the citizens tuated, we may suppose, by a spark of that of the United States, who, under the laws of ambition which was quenched in the waters nations, might have used those arms as a of the Columbia river,-though here we raise defense against the gross violence of these no question about that, he put the direct Isthmus pirates-working with the energy inquiry to Lord Palmerston, whether the of devils for the destruction of American "British Government" designed to appropriindustry, and the separation and eventual ate to itself the town of San Juan de Nicarasubjugation of the States. The martial gua, or any part of the so-called Mosquito prowess of the American people, the bravest Territory. He, Lord Palmerston, answered and the most powerful on earth, and whose emphatically, "No; you know very well we soldiery is the most numerous and ready, have already colonies enough." notwithstanding the cowardly insinuation of mark was just," continues our Ambassador, a certain servile "assurer of the people writing to Mr. Clayton, August, 1849; "the that they are not strong enough to enforce, masses of the British colonies are becoming or even to demand their rights from Eng- too weighty for the central Government,”* land, this noble-hearted but deceived peo- we presume, for the central Government of ple will laugh at and despise the insinuation the British Empire. And is this the sole reathat the heavy giant on the other side can son that can be discovered by an American hurt them. But it is by intellect and cun- Ambassador why England shall not seize ning, more than by prowess, great conquests upon the territory of her neighbors-because are achieved. It is the art of conquerors to she is absolutely gorged with the spoil of create civil discord in the bosom of the na-nations-choked with conquest? And when tion they mean to destroy; to crush its operative industry; to supplant, over-ride, and silence its national literature; to contemn and weaken and muzzle its orators; to corrupt with servile opinion the education of its youth; to confuse and agitate its counsels; to distress and maim its commerce, or entice it away upon false and futile enterprises; to lull its vigilance asleep with flattering em-joicing! God grant the time may come that bassies; to overwhelm its foreign representatives with delusive approbation, and with other means more seductive and more powerful. These are the more approved and the more successful modes of conquest. Noidle declaration now of war, or threats of reprisal; the day of these and of the reverence of treaties is passed away, and now is the epoch of "assurances," of telegraphic dispatches, and of mutual admiration. The name of "perfidious" is no longer prejudicial to the conductors of nations, and great politicians," who place their subtlety in circumvention, smile at the simple decla she has got enough, an American Ambassador is much delighted and well assured that she will take no more! The British Government will not take possession of Central America, not because she has no right to it, not because it is robbery and piracy to do so, but because she has enough; and when she has enough, we are to go on our way re she will have enough, but in another sense; that she may be compelled to disgorge-to give up what she has unjustly appropriated. "When the ownership of Vancouver's Island was the subject of debate," continues our Ambassador, "the House of Commons took no interest in the question." Truly a very indifferent House of Commons, and well satisfied. The responsibility did not rest with them, but with their Minister. His Message of the President respecting Tigre Island. House of Reps., Pub. Doc. No. 75, July 22, 1850. |