THE fathers of our Constitution hoped that our national existence would glide on like a quiet stream, fertilizing the valleys through which it flowed, and reflecting from its bosom the image of Liberty robed in law. This hope has been in a great measure realized. Our quiet has been seldom distracted by the clang of arms. The Indian has sometimes moved on our border; the Tripolitan pirate has been made to feel and fear the vengeance he provoked; and we have successfully vindicated against the arrogant claimant of the sovereignty of the seas, the rights which our ancestors wrested from her grasp. But the prevailing tenor of our course has been peaceful. Disturbed by no longings for our neighbors' lands, we have been content sedulously to cultivate and rear the tender shoots of popular liberty, so auspiciously planted in our midst. We have been careful to dig around them, and to hedge them in by many defences, lest they might be touched with too rude a hand by those to whose care they were committed; and we have been quick to mark the growth of every power inimical to their existence.

A national prejudice pointed to the head of the Republic as the source of danger; and the testimony of history may be invoked in its support.

The fears of an earlier age criticised with over-scrupulous nicety a proclamation of neutrality; the alien and sedition laws were ascribed to the aspirations of Executive ambition, though more probably the offspring of the terror inspired by the portentous aspect and events of the times; and the claim of another President to appoint a plenipotentiary to the Panama Mission was resisted as the manifestation of an encroaching spirit.

But these vague apprehensions were soon realized in more substantial dangers. A man who had doubtless" deserved well of the Republic," was elevated to its highest honor with an eclat, perhaps second only to the father of his country; and strong in the favor of the people, he proclaimed himself the representative of their sovereignty. By sweeping from office his political opponents he consolidated a power with which he afterwards, not without success, assailed the citadel of the Constitution. weapon proved, he wielded it to wrest from

His

its legal guardianship the public treasure; while, supported by an obsequious populace, he thundered anathemas against an insubordinate Senate, and obliterated from its journal the record of his condemnation. His patronage transmitted his retainers and his principles to his successor, who, with a different nature and a different kind of capacities, somewhat ludicrously strove to ape the imperative strides of his master. The nation bore with the lion; but it revolted against the delegated authority of the fox.

A sad and humiliating interregnum of vacillation and folly, extravagant pretension and feeble action disgusted the friends of constitutional liberty; the puppet of a faction, obnoxious to none by reason of his insignificance, finally united the suffrages of his distracted party; and the nursery rhyme of the lion and the unicorn fighting for a crown, will best exemplify and portray the result.

Happily seated above his peers, this person hastens to display the superiority of fortune over merit, by announcing his accession to "this distinguished consideration," at an earlier age than the most eminent of his predecessors. The diffidence of his ability to discharge the duties of his high station, which he so modestly expressed and his supporters so keenly felt, has been amply justified by the event, and has redounded equally to the honor of his frankness and his penetration.*

Endowed with no beneficent genius to bless his kind, yet feverishly anxious to signalize the fleeting years of his power, and duly admonished of the coming of that official night when no man can work, he has shown an activity in evildoing far beyond the expectations of his bitterest foes.

Strong in the confidence which ignorance inspires, he essayed in the unproved arms of diplomacy to measure passes with Great Britain, for an uncultivable "wholeness of wilderness" which abler administrations, if patriotic enough to desire, had not been skillful enough to win. From no trouble of conscience, as having at the risk of bloodshed asserted a claim but partially founded in equity, but simply from discovering that he had mistaken his vocation, he turned to invoke the aid of the coarser and more familiar weapons of popular passions and

national hatred, to take by force what he failed to obtain by art. The sturdy firmness of the Senate saved the country from this great iniquity; and it soon became apparent that "clear and unquestionable were used in a Pickwickian sense and by no means hindered the President from being content with a half of the whole of Oregon.

Was it from mere chagrin at being so headed off and baffled, that he turned again to vent his spleen with more safety on a feebler foe? Was he animated with the hope of blending the purple glories of war with the paler lustre of diplomatic honors? Did he think to obliterate the memory of his defeat in the North, by expanding with violence and bloodshed the limits of our Republic over the territory of our southern sister? Or were there impulses in his breast of a still more unpatriotic spirit, of a darker policy, of a more criminal ambition?

Texas held to the Nueces, but claimed to the Rio del Norte, against the equal claim and the actual possession of Mexico; and while Congress had declared the limits of Texas a matter for negotiation, the President, eluding its restraint by not asking its leave, determined to seize on the disputed territory to the uttermost limits which negotiation could possibly give, and planted his cannon at a point whence they shortly after battered a Mexican town. The collision which this position rendered inevitable, was begun by our troops. The insane cry of American blood shed on American soil, extorted from Congress an act whose false recital laid to the charge of Mexico the war the President had begun : and under its authority he hastened to execute his schemes of conquest.

A general with a thousand men hastened through a thousand miles of forest to Santa Fé; a sloop-of-war appeared off Monterey, and a detachment of marines marched to the City of Angels; a pusillanimous governor of Mexico fled; and without the firing of a gun, in virtue of these acts, California and New Mexico, ten degrees square, and peopled by 100,000 inhabitants, were treated as conquered territory. The conquering commanders, in July and August, at Monterey, the City of Angels and Santa Fé, issued their proclamations, whose similarity sufficiently refers them to a common origin. They concur in declaring the de

partments of California and New Mexico, in their full limits, to belong to the United States; in promising the inhabitants perfect security of freedom and property; in assuring them of the intention of the United States to provide them with free governments, similar to its other territories. Stockton calls on the people to elect their magistrates, and proclaims himself protector till the definitive establishment of the promised government; while Kearney continues the existing officers, but tenders the oath of allegiance, claims the inhabitants as citizens of the United States, and denounces the penalties of treason against those in arms against his authority.

In each territory, regular governments are in full and undisturbed operation, organized under the forms, though hardly imbued with the spirit, of American liberty. The Organic Law, purporting to have been ordained by the government of the United States for the territory of New Mexico, merits a closer examination by its elaborate minuteness of detail, and that final and permanent aspect which belies the temporary character it assumes on its face. In it we recognize the lineaments of our venerable Constitution, and smile to see the forms of liberty imposed as a boon by the despotism of a

conqueror.

A governor supported by his secretaries of war and the treasury; supreme and inferior tribunals for the interpretation of the law; a legislative body, constituted with all the forms of an upper and a lower chamber, the terms of whose members respectively continue for four and two years; constitute the apparatus of a government which has sprung up in the wilderness like the prophet's gourd, its officers supported by competent salaries, and its powers unlimited, save by the sole condition that it can enact no law inconsistent with those of the United States; and the whole is authenticated as "done" by virtue of authority conferred on its author by the Government of the United States.

Congress has certainly authorized no such proceedings; we must then look for the authority whence they emanated, to the President and his cabinet.

These governments are claimed by the Administration to have gone quietly into operation. We hear, in fact, of no effec

tual popular resistance; and the mur murs of discontent die away in the distance, long ere they could reach us.

We must assume, then, that the people of California and New Mexico have accepted the terms offered by the procla mations--and that awed by our arms, or won by our blandishments, they have submitted to a force which they found it vain, or which they felt disinclined to resist. It is, therefore, a conquered territory, received into the allegiance and protection of the conqueror; and as such, the President in his message regards it.

The legal results of this state of things have been the subject of embittered controversy, though there would seem little difficulty in defining the rights and regulations which the law of nations derives from the conquest, submission and acceptance of a hostile province.

The presence of our victorious eagles, when resistance has subsided into submission, seems clearly to carry with it the national sovereignty. For allegiance is the correlative of sovereignty, which is the right to command obedience, and involves duty of protection. Where that can no longer be afforded, obedience can no longer be exacted; and, consequently, allegiance can no longer exist. To demand obedience of people beyond the sphere of protection, and in the power of the enemy, would be to expect the vanquished to subdue the victor, and the weak to subvert the law which subjects him to the strong. By the military occupation of a province and the submission of the inhabitants, though the war rage in other parts of the empire, here it has ceased; "by the surrender, the inhabitants pass under a temporary allegiance to the conquering government."* It follows the power to enforce obedience, and the duty to afford protection. The war is considered just on both sides; might is taken for the index rather than the source of right; and the power to compel obedience is held to prove the right to require it. Conquest may be the mother of legitimate government; but its portentous offspring is unshackled despotism. This result is more easily acquiesced in by the reason, when the submission is in pursuance of a proclamation, a manifesto, or a capitulation, and these fall within the acknowledged province of a mere military commander. From that time they be

Wheat. Int Law, pt. iii. c. ii. §2,