Alexandria Gazette

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ALEXANDRIA GAZETTE.

After a session of four months, which has been more prodigally wasted than any similar period of our national legislation, the House of Representatives, i.e., the glorious economical majority has at length exhibited a disposition to permit the consideration of the public interests to supersede the measures of political and party intrigue. As something, therefore, will now present itself which I consider in some measure worthy of my attention and of your publication, I shall break the "cold chain of silence" which has so long and so necessarily bound me, and resume my correspondence with the Alexandria Gazette.

"At the opening of those doors," says Burke, in his famous letter on a Regicide peace, "what a sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of Royal impotence, in the precedency which they will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted to them, according to the seniority of their degradation!" Had that great legislator written this sentence for our own day, and for the present circumstances of our country, its application could not have been more felicitous.

The deep, unabashed game of mock republicanism which has been in some instances so successfully played here, by the satellites of ignoble ambition, is no less revolting than surprising to the man of patriotic feeling. What has the House done since the first of December last? Why it has expended thousands of dollars of the people's money, for which we have had in return lengthy, desultory, and worthless discussions, on points of order, and inflammatory speeches on the abolition of slavery within the District of Columbia—a question which should never have been introduced within the walls of that House. Here, indeed, has been a sight, melancholy to behold and injurious in its results.

Had the spirit of our enlightened defenders of the present administration filled the bosoms of those of that day when "deeds not words" was the principle, the temple of the Constitution had never been erected, and the people had been forever shut out from those blessings which nothing but the earnest and most active exercise of their republican virtue can preserve from the impending annihilation. Immediately connected with this latter observation, it is somewhat consolatory to observe that they with whom rests the permanency of our institutions, have not slumbered in blind and confiding security. Various political movements throughout the country have had a most disheartening effect on the Kitchen consultations here. The collar aspirants know that they have deceived the people—that "all is not gold that glitters"—that the "Benton Mint Drops" have lost their expected flavor—that the "Yellow Boys" have not yet been mustered, and that the file leaders of the Administration, each, with vision of prophetic fear, "grins horribly a ghastly smile."

when 'thou' yet suest nuance of legitimate power' is on the tips

It has been said by a celebrated wit that he never saw a miser who was not afraid of a ghost; and never did the appearance of the Globe, as the friend of the people, confirm the observation with more weakness and desperation than now. With that branch of the Government, the Globe belongs to Mr. Van Buren; but a portion of it still belongs to the descendants of the heroes who made a home and an independence for unborn generations; and it must be folly in the extreme even in that sapient organ of the Kitchen Confederacy, to say that its patronized duplicity can successfully mislead a people whom its own effrontery has awakened to a sense of their rights. The scorpion stings itself under certain circumstances, and thus it must soon be with the "Organ." Its imbecility is known by its obligatory patronage, and its baseness acknowledged by all true Americans: and, in conclusion, for the present, let me fervently add, in old Virginia's spirit—sic semper tyrannis!

H.
Washington, April 11th.