7

1

Ir's an ill bird that fouls its own nest. He is a bad patriot who is seen to make it an object of eager partizan zeal to degrade and disgrace his own country, and his country's government, not only in the eyes of our own people, but of the rest of the world,-not only of those engaged in controversy with us on the point at issue, but of that envious stepmother-land ever scowling malignly upon us with evil eye from across the water; keen for the discovery of every occasion for a sneer, quick to seize it, and bitterly scornful in pushing it to its utmost possible length, of insult against us, and disparagement of democratic institutions.

The Annexation of Texas is a measure which industrious arts of misrepresentation and sophism have labored to pervert into an act of national rapacity, spoliation, and bad faith,-aggravated by the comparative weakness of the poor neighbor who is the object of the imputed wrong. In the relations of private life, a similar charge would certainly be one which an honorable selfrespect would repel with the most sensitive indignation. The honor of our Country surely should be no less dear to each of her sons not wholly unworthy of that parentage. We acknowledge, therefore, a sentiment not far removed from that which is the just meed of all treason, when we see a portion of the American press itself teaching to the foreigner this language of outrage against our own national honor, -pleading guilty to the charge in the name of the country, for the sake of

maintaining a partizan argument or partizan clamor against an antagonist party ascendant in the government. To the American in Mexico or in England, reading in the journals of those countries, copious extracts from the papers of his own, stamped on every line with this unpatriotic moral treason, and fully sustaining the worst that can be even pretended by our worst enemies there,by a testimony paraded as the confession of the party criminated-there can be but little consolation in the reflection that these are indeed American journals, from whose columns such insulting citations are thus flouted in his face. Smarting for his country beneath the sting of the insult-(and to a jealous delicacy of honor, insult does not need the barb of truth to pierce and sting)

he will remember that so the "struck eagle"

"Views his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivers in his

heart.

Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel

He nursed the pinion that impelled the steel."

In truth, this traitorous Anti-Americanism has been dealt with all too leniently. Too much indulgence has been extended to that which may perhaps have been honest difference of opinion before the action of the country became decided and committed, but which after that time lost its right to a similar charitableness of construction and treat