The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

If there ever was a nation impelled by a blind fatality to ruin, it is that nation that now lords it upon the ocean. Not contented with having nearly the whole European world to contend with, and the commercial ruin with which the closing the continental market to her productions menaces her, she would really seem as if she were striving by the most aggravated wrongs to add the U. States to the list of her open and active enemies. The wound inflicted upon the feelings of our citizens by the recent infamous outrage of Humphreys will not be easily healed; it will rankle; it will strike deep into the minds of our countrymen; it has done more than the deadliest enemies of Britain could have done, to unite every discordant feeling into the conviction that the British government, whatever they may promise, will give us nothing but hostility. It will operate as a solemn admonition to us to adopt a course of conduct, not the offspring of circumstance or of a spirit of impracticable accommodation; but such a course of conduct as shall enable us to maintain our own interests independently of the good or the bad offices of Britain. Not, in fine, to look to treaty stipulations for mere palliatives, but to take commanding ground, and teach an unjust government that for one vulnerable point she can reach in our system, we can touch to the quick ten in hers.

The barbarous exploit of Captain Humphreys has raised a monument to his name, whose infamy will give it eternal duration. He has heroically triumphed over a ship, whose inferiority not only screened him from danger, but over the unsuspecting confidence of friends, and, what is still more honorable, over the women and children whom he beheld upon her deck!

Is this outrage sanctioned by the British administration; or is it solely the act of an interior officer?

We cannot consider it the act of the administration. So far, indeed, it may be ascribed to them, as being indirectly countenanced by the marked indignities they have offered us in the impunity and promotion extended to those who have shamefully violated our neutral rights. Of this the honors recently conferred on Whitby is a memorable instance. But hostile as they may be in the abstract to neutral rights, their recent deportment indicates something like a disposition to be, at least for the present, on friendly terms with us. To ascribe then this act directly to them would be to stigmatize them with a complication of injustice, hypocrisy, and folly, which ought not to be imputed to any men without the clearest proofs.

But if it is not their act, it is, unquestionably the act of an officer of the British government, for whose conduct that government is accountable. Will they disavow it? Will they make ample, honorable reparation? Is it an act for which any reparation can atone?

There are all questions of the utmost importance, which we shall not attempt to answer. Reposing with absolute confidence in the government, we have no doubt of those steps being taken which the case demands.