feeling would prompt our citizens, each man for himself, to make a personal contribution towards a fund which should properly and nobly speak the gratitude of NewYork towards the venerable patriots among them. But the tax-payer, who would liberally contribute to such an object, in a proper way, may very naturally object to Mr. Tallmadge thrusting his hand into his pocket, and forcing him to give for what and to whom that eloquent gentleman pleases. If the city owes an unliquidated amount, not of gratitude, but of money, to the revolutionary pensioners, let it be paid by the Common Council, and let Mr. Tallmadge be as eloquent as he pleases, or as he can be, in support of the appropriation. But beyond taking care of our persons and our property, the functions neither of our city government, nor of our state government, nor of our national government, extend. We hope to see the day when the people will jealously watch and indignantly punish every violation of this principle.

That what we have here written does not proceed from any motive other than that we have stated, we trust we need not assure our readers.

That, above all,

it does not proceed from any unkindness towards the remaining heroes of the revolution, must be very evident to all such as have any knowledge of the personal relations of the writer. Among those who would receive the benefit of Mr. Tallmadge's scheme is the venerable parent of him whose opinions are here expressed. That parent, after a youth devoted to the service of his country, after a long life of unblemished honour, now, in the twilight of his age, and bending under the burden of fourscore years, is indebted to the tardy justice of his Government for much of the little light that cheers the evening of his eventful day. Wanting indeed should we be, therefore, in every sentiment of filial duty and love, if we could

oppose this plan of a public donation, for any other than public and sufficient reasons. But viewing it as an attempt to exercise a power which the people never meant to confer upon their servants, we should be wanting in those qualities of which this donation is intended to express the sense of the community, if we did not oppose it. We trust the resolution will not pass the upper Board.

PROTECTION OF COMMERCIAL INTERESTS.

[From the Evening Post, Dec. 12, 1834.]

The resolution offered by Mr. Morgan, in the House of Representatives on Tuesday last, instructing the Committee on Commerce to inquire into the expediency of obliging all masters of vessels trading south of the equator to take at least two apprentices with them, does not embrace a sufficiently extensive range of inquiry. Ought not that Committee, or other appropriate ones, standing or special, to inquire into the expediency of obliging all shipwrights to have a certain number of apprentices, “ as a means of benefitting the commercial interests of the United States?" The art of ship-building is certainly a very important one to our commercial interests, quite as much so as the art of navigating the southern ocean and catching whales and seals. Then again, there is the rope-making business, which is also important. If that art should be lost, our "commercial interests" would cut but a sorry figure. Ought we not, therefore, to guard against so great a calamity, oblige ropemakers to educate a certain number of apprentices ? We should have few sailors if we had no ropes. The raising of hemp, and the manufacture of canvass, are both important to our "commercial interests." Con

gress had perhaps better look out that the race of hemp. raisers and canvass manufacturers do not become extinct by timely passing a law obliging all now engaged in these pursuits to take apprentices; for we never heard of but one ship that could lie upon a wind and make headway without canvass, and there is not likely to be another, unless, indeed, steam might supply the place of canvass; and then the law would only have to be modi. fied so as to transfer the apprentices over to the steam engineer. If Mr. Morgan begins upon this forcing system, and is for doing everything by legislation, he must not stop at south sea ship apprentices. A wide field is open before him. When he comes to expatiate at large in it, however, he may chance to discover that he has started on a wrong principle,—that the old notions of government bounty, protection, prohibition and coercion in matters of trade, are totally exploded by the wisest men and deepest thinkers of the age, that mankind have discovered at last that they are governed too much-and that the true democratic principle, and the true principle of political economy, is "Let us alone."

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It may be proper to add that we do not mean, by our

ironical mode of allusion to the subject, the slightest disrespect to Mr. Morgan, for whose character we entertain great regard.

THE FRENCH TREATY-PRESIDENT'S

MESSAGE.

[From the Evening Post, December 15, 1834.]

We have heretofore remarked that a great number of the opposition prints, including some most distinguished for the bitterness of their hostility to the present Administration, fully approve of that portion of the President's message which relates to France. All of them, without

war.

exception, so far as we have observed, admit that his statement of the question at issue between the two gov. ernments is exceedingly lucid and accurate, and that the conduct of France deserves ail the reprehension it has received. But constrained, either by the force of habit, or the force of political malignity, to oppose the Executive at all hazards and on all subjects, there are many prints that assail his proposed measure of reprisals with a bitterness which could hardly be exceeded if France were wholly in the right, and the mere suggestion of a course by no means belligerant were an actual declaration of The spectacle of so considerable a portion of the press of a free and enlightened country attacking the Chief Magistrate with the utmost vindictiveness, for simply recommending measures which he deems called for alike by regard for the long-deferred rights of plundered citizens, and by the claims of national honour, would create emotions of a painful kind, had not our vocation long since accustomed us to see partisan writers lose all sense of patriotism in the engrossing sentiment of hostility to the exalted man "who has filled the measure of his country's glory." As it is, we view the effervescence of their rancour with a feeling near akin to indifference; and indeed it is an employment not wholly without amusement to watch the straits to which they are reduced, in order to give some colour of reason to the violent invectives they pour out upon General Jackson's head.

One tribe of opponents, determined to consider the suggested measure of reprisals as tantamount to a declaration of war, straightway fall to counting the costs, and graduate the wickedness of the proposal by a scale of dollars and cents. These ready reckoners, with a facility of calculation surpassing that of Zerah Colburn, have ascertained the exact expense of war, which they set

down at fifty millions of dollars; and hereupon they rail at the President for his enormous profligacy in proposing to spend fifty millions for the recovery of five! France, they acknowledge, has treated us very badly. Our national forbearance, they are obliged to confess, has been shown in an exemplary degree, throughout the whole course of a most protracted and perplexing negotiation; and when that negotiation at last terminated in a treaty, by which the spoiler of our commerce and the plunderer of our citizens agreed to pay us back simply the amount rifled from us many years before, and not even that amount without the concession, on our part, of commercial advantages which she had no right to claim, they admit that to violate such a treaty, in the face of all the honourable obligations which can bind one nation to keep faith with another, is a degree of perfidy that it would be difficult to characterise by too strong a term. But fifty millions of dollars!-there is the rub. The phantom of that large sum of money haunts their imaginations and appals their understanding! To spend fifty millions to coerce France into the payment of one tenth of that sum is a proceeding for which they can find no rule in their political arithmetic. If we could compel France to pay us the debt at an expense of two or three millions, so that we might pocket one or two millions by the opera. tion, these patriotic journals would applaud the undertaking. If we could make money by fighting, they would be the first to cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war. But the idea of throwing money away for the mere "bubble reputation," seems to them exceedingly prepos terous. National honour is a phrase to which they can attach no import by itself; it must be accompanied by the expression, national profit, to give it any significancy in their eyes.

We should like to know what opinion these worthies