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government, were soothed, and both States were carried for Polk in the ensuing struggle. Without them he would have been defeated; for New-York could not have been lost to Mr. Clay had Pennsylvania declared for him.

The bill thus framed was submitted to the House, debated, considered by items, matured, and rejected! Yes, the party which had made the land ring with execrations of the "Black Tariff," could not frame a substitute for it acceptable to a House wherein it had over sixty majority! All efforts to resuscitate it failed; the House would not disturb the Tariff; it dared not present a direct, practical Tariff issue to the people. To find fault with the Whig Tariff, vaguely, or by attacks upon certain items obnoxious to local hostility, was neither difficult nor dangerous; but to proffer a rival measure, and ask the country to consider the two and judge between them, was another matter. So the Senate was deprived of the satisfaction of nailing to its table any anti-Tariff concoction of the House, and the Whig Tariff remains untouched, and ever since unthreatened, to this day. These facts bespeak our adversaries' respect for the merits, as well as the popularity, of that benign measure. Could they have framed a bill in their own judgments likely to prove as satisfactory to the country as the present Tariff, they would not have hesitated to send it to be defeated in the Senate, and thus form one of the bases of a contrast between the measures of the rival parties.

No corresponding shyness was evinced by the House with respect to any other of the great practical issues which divide the two parties, because no similar apprehensions were felt with regard to any other. A blow struck at the Tariffaffects directly the great industrial interests of the country, palsying the arm of the mechanic, arresting the shuttle of the weaver, and rendering unsalable many of the products of the farmer. But assaults, equally deadly, upon the national well-being, through the medium of the currency, or the fiscal economy of the government, are by no means so perilous to their contrivers. The evils thence resulting are as real, perhaps as formidable, as in the other case, but they do not point so directly to their causes, and the unreflecting many are easily taught to attribute them to the Banks, the speculators, the moneyed capitalists,

or any other target of popular jealousy and hatred. And thus we saw the same party which hesitated in, recoiled from, its long meditated and loudly vaunted attack on the Protective Policy, unite as one man in passing bills to re-establish the Sub-Treasury, and to repeal the contingent and now too remote Distribution of the Proceeds of the Public Lands. No man doubted that the Senate would (as it did) promptly arrest both these bills; they were not passed to be perfected, but to indicate the purpose of the House, to overthrow whatever the Whigs had constructed, so far as it might do so without periling its ascendency. A resolution denying to Congress the power to create a National Bank, and denouncing such a Bank as dangerous, pernicious, &c., was introduced to, and carried through the House, with no reference to any legislative action, present or prospective, but in the sorry hope of filling the party's sails with one blast from the darkest caves of prejudice and distrust. It was not sent to the Senate for concur

rence.

At the opening of the first session of the expiring Congress, the House reenacted the rules of its predecessoramongst them the famous XXIst (now XXVth), which forbids the reception of petitions relating to Slavery. The same House, at the opening of its second session, rescinded that very rule by a large majority. There was no shadow of reason for its maintenance at one time more than another; in fact, no valid reason for it at any time. But in the former instance, the ultra-slavery feeling was to be gratified, and won to the support, (as was presumed,) of Mr. Van Buren; in the latter it had been thoroughly gratified by the abandonment of Van Buren and the election of Polk. A very different spirit now required conciliating, and the famous " Gag Rule was the sacrifice.

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Congress, has never hesitated to vote for Graduation Bills, which, if passed, could not fail to diminish by at least one half the receipts for Public Lands, and postpone the payment of even that moiety for years. The law now says, "you can obtain no Public Land except for cash, and then not below one dollar and a quarter per acre." But Graduation changes all this. The man who pays for his land when first offered for sale, is still required to pay the old price; but let him withold payment for a few years, and he will have to pay but one dollar per acre; and in a few years more, still less, and so on till the price has fallen to fifty or twenty-five cents. The consequence is easily foreseen. Few will pay two hundred dollars for a quarter section or one hundred and sixty acres of wild land, when, by quietly waiting for a few years, he may have the same tract for one hundred and sixty dollars, then one hundred and twenty dollars, and so on. The lowest price, all experience teaches, is that which will be paid for nearly all the Public Land that is purchased; and a bill to reduce the price after thirty years exposure to entry and sale, to fifty cents an acre, is in effect, a bill, to sell all lands hereafter at fifty cents an acre, and wait thirty years for the pay. We rejoice that this project has again been condemned, though rallying a large majority of the dominant party to its support.

For a Reform in the Rates of Postage and in the general policy and temper of the Post Office Department, the people have looked to this Congress with anxious hope. Petitions, representations, illustrations innumerable, have been forwarded from every quarter to Washington. At first (we speak from personal experience), the disposition of the House, and especially of its Post Office Committee, was decidedly averse to any material reduction of Postage or Reform of any kind. A bill reducing the Rates of Postage essentially, and proposing other needed Reforms, passed the Senate at the first session, but was lost in the House. A like measure, improved, though not yet perfect, passed the Senate seasonably in this session. It proposed a Uniform Rate of five cents for each letter or packet weighing less than half an ounce, conveyed in the Mails, no matter for what distance. This Bill, though it had passed the Senate by the strong vote of 38 to 12, encountered a determined opposition in

the House, where the feature of a Uniform Rate of Letter Postage was stricken out, and a rate of ten cents, for letters conveyed over three hundred miles, substituted. In this shape, the bill passed by a vote of 128 Yeas to 74 Nays, and has become a law, to take effect on and after the 1st of July next. Newspapers are to be conveyed thirty miles or under free of charge; for greater distances the present rates are charged; while on all other printed matter a considerable reduction is made. All compulsion to send newspapers or magazines through the Mails is removed by this bill.

Although we had advocated and should have preferred, a Uniform Rate of Letter Postage, yet, in view of the facts that the Franking Privilege is but partially abolished by this act-Members of Congress as well as Presidents, ExPresidents, &c., being allowed to frank without limitation, while the vital prepayment of Postage is not exacted-we do not doubt that all the Postage accruing under this bill will be needed to sustain the Department-probably more. But great reductions will eventually be made in the cost of the service, which will ultimately be effected under the clause which forbids any stipulation of the mode of conveyance in future contracts for transporting the Mails.-That the provisions of this bill may be greatly amended, we cannot doubt, but we gladly hail it as the first decisive step in a great and needed Reform; and by far the most beneficent act of the Twenty-Eighth Congress. Only thirteen Whigs voted against it in the House-not one of them from a Free State. There were but eleven votes against it from all the Free States, that of Charles J. Ingersoll being the only one from the North.

To the Senate be honor rendered for daring to be just in the matter of the long delayed Indemnity for French Spoliations prior to 1800. The equity of the claim is palpable: The French unjustly captured and despoiled our merchantmen to a great amount: our Government earnestly demanded reparation; our ministers obtained it in the purchase of Louisiana, of which the satisfaction of our subsisting claims on France was expressly a part of the consideration. The government thus pocketed the indemnity which it had sought for its despoiled citizens, and it has kept every penny of it to this day. Meantime, the claimants have, from time to time, implored Congress for jus

tice, and many of them have gone down to their graves in pinching poverty for want of their property, thus plundered by a foreign power, and reclaimed, but never restored by their own government. We regret to state that the House did not concur in the passage of this bill.

Of the action of the majority on the Texas question, what shall history say? Must it not be compelled to portray a flagrant sacrifice of high national considerations to subserve the lowest party ends? And this by those who are eternally mouthing of this matter of Annexation as a great American question, far above the sphere of party objects and party struggles. But when the question of Annexation was, in truth, no party question, but one of simply National concern, and Texas appeared (in 1837) at our metropolis, an unsolicited applicant for Annexation, with a far smaller public debt and a much larger public domain than at present, and with less complicated foreign relations, President Van Buren and Secretary Forsyth, the latter as thorough and ardent a Southron as the sun ever shone upon, at once repulsed the kindly proffer, and repulsed it for reasons of enduring force. You are at war with Mexico,' said the Secretary of State; "she claims rightful dominion over you; and until this war is terminated, this pretension abandoned, the question of Annexation is for us a question of peace or war with Mexico. We decline to compromise our friendly relations with that power." Here was a great national question promptly and justly met as a national question, with the universal acquiescence and approval of the American people. Some years afterward (1843), the subject came before the Massachusetts Legislature, and a unanimous decision was given against Annexation, on grounds as valid to-day as then, and most sweeping in their range of hostility to the measure and its incitements. Here was no party difference each party vied with the other in the freedom and earnestness of its assertion of the principles both deemed essential, not to party but to national well-being. Some of the members who were then foremost in condemning, are now prominently zealous in approving the project! And thus is it also with many members of the Twenty-Eighth Congress. Had the naked question been stated, and the vote taken on its first assembling-" Will you advise and consent,

in defiance of the protest of Mexico, to the Annexation of Texas to this country?"-with no party interest in, or influence over the measure, who can doubt that the result would have been an overwhelming negative? But the President and Cabinet were first enlisted in the interest of Annexation; then a few prominent politicians of the party Mr. Tyler had last joined; and soon a little coterie of avowed Annexationists was formed, the Representatives of the Mississippi Repudiators very properly taking the lead. By dint of the most industrious canvassing, backed by the power and patronage of the Executive and the money of Texas land-jobbers and scrip-holders, the number had been gradually swelled, until fifteen Senators, (nearly one-third of the body,) were induced to record their votes for the confirmation of the Tyler Treaty. Probably a like proportion, say sixty in all, might have been brought to the same point in the House, but at no time prior to May last, could any measure, proposing Annexation in defiance of Mexico, have received over one-third of the votes of either House. But when, near the close of May, the activity and resolution of the Annexationists had accomplished the overthrow of the man who stood in the way of their obtaining complete control of the party machinery, the transformation was complete. Thousands who, up to that moment, had been steadfast and open in their hostility to the project, now joined in the hurrah for Annexation.

Yet it is not wholly true that the Texas Question defeated Mr. Van Buren. It very probably turned against him the nicely balanced scale; but his real or supposed unpopularity, his many inveterate adversaries in the ranks of his own party, and the disgust excited by the clumsy manner in which delegations to Baltimore had been packed in his favor, had already prepared the train which was fired by the fuse of Texas. Thenceforward Annexation became to some extent a party Shibboleth, though there were notorious instances of non-conformity, as in the cases of Senators Benton and Wright, the Evening Post, and the signers of the exposed Secret Circular here. It was found necessary to use the strength which Mr. Wright had acquired by his opposition to Texas to bridge a threatening chasm between the Texas candidate and the Presidency, and the nomination thus made for Governor of New York was one without which Mr

Polk would not have been elected. AntiTexas men mingled lovingly with Annexationists in the canvass, and no questions were asked implying an exaction of conformity on this critical question. But the contest once over, and Mr. Polk pronounced the President elect, there was an instant and important change. It was now asserted that all who had voted for Polk had thereby declared for Annexation, and that the American people had expressly approved of that measure! The latter assertion is as contrary to reason as the former is to fact. There was a very decided majority on the entire Popular Vote for President for the candidates opposed to Annexation, and if the Anti-Annexation vote had not been divided, Mr. Polk would have been beaten by 146 Electors to 129. But this, though known to, is utterly unregarded by the bestriders of what was originally Mr. Tyler's hobby. Annexation is now pronounced the great issue in the late contest, and repugnance to it hostility to the incoming administration, to be punished by a denial of its smiles. That this new phase should have won many friends to the measure in Congress is not amazing. No where is there a larger proportion of anxious suitors for or expectants of Presidential favor than in that body. Scores of the Members have already been relieved from all farther care on behalf of their constituents, and will sink on the 4th inst. into a very dense obscurity, if unblessed by Executive sunshine. Of the nine from this State who voted for the Joint Resolution of the House, only one (Mr. Maclay of this city) had been reëlected. Melancholy as is the fact, it is therefore not unaccountable that the Joint Resolution, which could not, a year before, have obtained sixty votes in the House actually passed that body in 1845 by the decisive majority of 120 to

98.

At last, the stupendous wrong and mischief devised by the Tyler dynasty, and rendered inevitable by the election of Polk, have triumphed, so far as the single action of our Government can effect that result. Congress has been coerced, by a most flagrant exercise of executive power and patronage, into a consent to the Annexation of Texas. Overriding every consideration of constitutional limitation, or respect for popular sovereignty, a bare majority of the Senate

* Merrick, of Maryland.

has assented to the House Resolutions. That majority was made by the help of one recreant Whig, who betrayed his constituents and spurned the emphatic request of their Legislature, with that of three Loco-Focos,† who notoriously defied the will of their constituents, and the express instructions of their respective Legislatures. Had these four votes been cast as they ought, the measure would have been lost by six majority, instead of being carried by two. Yet the smallest possible majority has been held sufficient to change the very elements of our national existence-to subvert the established balance of power, and remove the centre of the Union-to place the American people practically under a different government from that which their Constitution created, and to which alone they had assented. This is the crowning achievement of the Twenty-Eighth Congress.

That there are men who, so that their end be gained, laugh to scorn all scruple as to means, is sadly true. These, being in favor of Annexation per se, regard as frivolous all considerations of illegality and iniquity in the means of effecting it. But, to every reflecting, conscientious patriot, it must be evident that the forcing of so momentous a measure irrevocably on the country, through the action of a bare majority in one House of Congress, through the appliances of Presidential smiles and frowns and the severest party drill, is an outrage on the spirit and the forms of our institutions, which cannot fail, if unrebuked, to draw after it immeasurable evils.

Whether Texas should, or should not, at a proper time and under proper circumstances, be admitted to a place in our Union, should she desire it, we need not, and do not here discuss. That a Southern boundary might somewhere be found for us more acceptable than the line of the Red River and the Sabine, is quite possible, though it is by no means certain that the acquisition of Texas, with no single boundary settled but that which has hitherto divided her from us, will give us, eventually, a better frontier. But no sane, considerate man, can doubt that if the novel step is to be taken of uniting two independent nations, there should first be a careful removal of all obstructions or impediments to the union. If the junction be one dictated by nature and the

†Tappan and Allen, Ohio; Niles, Connecticut.

enduring interests of the two nations respectively, there can certainly be no danger in awaiting such removal. The junction should clearly not take place while one country is at war with a nation with which the other is at peace, nor while the territory of one is claimed to be the rightful property of a third power. All such difference should be settled before the untrammeled nation should venture to complicate its relations with the cther. But, should it farther appear that a very large proportion of the people of the one country were utterly averse to any such union, then a decent self-respect should impel those of the other to decline it; while no wise and just government, surely, would force its own citizens into so intimate a relation, for which so many of them entertained a deep aversion. That no effort should first be made to secure the favorable regard of other nations, with whom these two had different and perhaps irreconcilable treaties, would seem impossible. And yet, the people of the United States are suddenly and recklessly involved in this union, while a full half of them are resisting and struggling against it; while Texas is at open war with Mexico, and her independence unacknowledged; and when it is known that other and far more powerful nations are greatly averse to this union. No effort is made to conciliate adversaries, to terminate the War, or to quiet the internal resistance. With an indecent haste, which the whole world will understand, our Annexationists have screwed a consent through the Houses

of Congress, and rush to consummate their project. Who can fail to discern in these proceedings the elements of future convulsion and calamity?

But no remonstrance will avail. The first act of the Annexation drama has been played out by Tyler and the Twenty-Eighth Congress, and these indifferent performers have retired from the stage, leaving to Polk and a new Congress the task of concluding their work. That it will be pressed with zeal by the former, we need not remark; and already we have significant whispers that the new Congress must be called together, in extra session, at an early day, to receive the assent of Texas, and perfect the enterprise. The cost of this may well be disregarded, in view of the aggregate of expenses which this acquisition is to fasten upon us. Bravely ended, then, is the first act of Annexation, amid roar of cannon and shouts of approving thousands! What, think you, shall be the end of the next?-and the next?

Enough for the day is the evil thereof. In the next Congress before, its close, if not at its outset-three new StatesIowa, Florida, and Texas-will be represented in either House. Florida has a deficient population; but a slave State was insisted on to balance Iowa, and now the admission of Texas will give us fifteen slave to fourteen free States-in all twenty-nine. And here, with the exception of mere business of routine, like the passage of the Annual Appropriation Bills, closes the record of the doings of the Twenty-Eighth Congress.

WINTER.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

With howling fury Winter makes his bound
Upon us, freezing Nature at a look.
He dashes out the sweet and dreamy hues
Of Indian Summer, that the eye, where it
The golden softness and the purple haze
Beheld at noon, at sunset sees the mist
Darken around the landscape, and the ear,
Nestling upon its pillow, hears the sleet
Ticking against the casement, whilst within
The silvery cracking of the kindling coal
Keeps merry chime. The morning rises up,

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