MORAL PROSPECTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
IT is true that our Transatlantic cousins are more prone to talk about than actually to engage in war ; but as the pitcher which goes often to the well comes home broken at last—as the boy cried " wolf" till nobody believed him, and yet the wolf did come—this habitual bluster and rhodomontade may lead to mischief in the end. It is not denied that we have senatorial and extra-senatorial Bobadils here at home quite fit to pair off with those of the United States, and perhaps in number scarcely interior; but, thanks to something in our form of government or our state of society, they rarely get into the Cabinet, and are always in a minority there. Mr. President TYLER'S advocacy of a crooked policy regarding Texas would he, like the Irish Repeal sympathies of Mr. President TYLER'S son, simply ludicrous in a private individual fighting "for his own hand": but when the chief magistrate of the Union con- cludes a treaty of annexation with a republic founded on the territory of a neighbouring and allied state by citizens of the Union —many of them of rather questionable character—it is time to stop laughing and look after our own property. It depends upon the American Senate alone to prevent as shabby a violation of the laws of nations as ever was committed by the worst of the old Kings and Kaisers, against whom the freemen of North America hold themselves entitled to rail in the gross. Mr. CLAY'S protest against the TYLER policy is honourable to himself and the party he represents : it shows that some of the old blood of the WASHINGTONS and ADAMSES still circulates in the land. But it cannot be forgotten that Mr. CLAY is the mouthpiece of a party which, with one or two brief intervals, has been in a minority ever since the election of THOMAS JEFFERSON as President. Mr. VAN BUREN'S qualified protest is infinitely less satisfactory than Mr. CLefs—just as Mr. Vex BUREN is himself in every respect a less satisfactory sort of person. Mr. Vex BUREN, it is true, points out the dishonesty and danger of the TYLER policy ; but the wind- up of his letter reads vastly like a hint to the Americans, that though he disapproves of annexing Texas, rather than not be Presi- dent he will consent if they insist upon it. The wavering virtue of Mr. VAN BUREN, and the long-standing minority of the class of statesmen represented by Mr. CLAY, are not encouraging auguries of what is to be expected from the Senate; although that body, like the Supreme Courts of Justice of the Union, has hitherto made a noble stand against the low principles of policy which have found favour in the eyes of the rabble of electors. If the Senate yield on the question of Texan annexation, our turn will undoubtedly come next. This is more than inference from the applicability to Canada of the immoral principle upon which the Texan treaty is justified. Some of the Trappers, whose friends and allies have been urging the Legislature of the Union to seize upon Oregon, it is credibly reported, have already established an organized settlement within the disputed territory. This has all the appearance of an exact repetition of what has been done in Texas. First, a body of unrecognized adventurers form a settle- ment; then, they are recognized as de facto an independent state ; and lastly, they are incorporated into the Union. In the Texan treaty, and in the Oregon settlement, we may read what awaits us if TYLER principles and TYLER partisans carry the day in the pending Presidential election and obtain a majority in the Senate. To us it is no agreeable prospect, to be dragged into war by the unprincipled encroachments of a kindred people. But the citizens of the United States will themselves be the greatest sufferers. We do not, indeed, anticipate, with some, a near disso- lution of the Union. There is enough of esprit de corps among the States to reconcile the citizens of New York to a common course with the Repudiators of Pennsylvania and Michigan ; the Antil Slavers of Boston with the Cez.nouxs, who look upon the occupa- tion of Texas as nothing but a just and necessary step in defence of the sacred institution of Negro Slavery; and all to take pride in extending their territory by violent or fraudulent appropriations of what belongs to neighbouring powers. It must be a virtuous, a happy society, in which such principles are unblushingly avowed I It is not in the American Union as in the Monarchical States of Europe. On this side of the Atlantic, a line has been drawn be- tween the statesman and the citizen class, which, whatever anoma- lies it may have occasioned, has at least bad the good effect of keeping domestic life comparatively pure from the lax principles of politicians. In our domestic circles a stricter morality has pre- vailed, and proved a counter-agent to public corruption. But in the United States this cannot be : the corruption of the rulers is there the corruption of all. The low swindling principles of Re- pudiation, the callousness to human suffering of the slave-owner, and the plundering propensities of the conqueror, are not likely to be confined to the cabinet : the poison will penetrate into domestic circles. A class will be formed in every State as demoralized as the rabble of Rome under the Emperors.
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