Lynchburg Virginian

DINNER TO MR. SENATOR BARTON,
in Louisville, Ky.

A late Western mail brought us an account of the public dinner given at Louisville, in Kentucky, to Mr. Barton, Senator from Missouri. The subscribers numbered nearly a hundred. Dr. Richard Ferguson president, supported by Coleman Rogers and Norborne B. Beall, as Vice Presidents. The dinner was, of course, marked by strong opposition to the present Administration. The fifth of the regular toasts was as follows:

"Hon. David Barton—While such sentinels are stationed on the watch-tower, not even the silent steps of Executive encroachment can pass unobserved."

This toast being drank, Mr. Barton delivered an address to the company, in the same vein of wit and sarcasm which characterized his able speeches in the Senate at the last session. The following extracts from it will afford to the general reader, perhaps a better idea of it than any description:

"Mr. President and Gentlemen: I recognize in the personal allusion to myself, with which you have just honored me, a sentiment more noble, and more worthy of freemen, than a mere personal compliment. I recognize your consistent adherence to the great principles of civil liberty regulated by law, your abhorrence of despotism governed by arbitrary executive will, and your unwavering attachment to the constitutional principles and national policy for which you entered into the late Presidential contest: and for which we now have the honor to stand together, in opposition to their violation and abandonment.

"During the struggle for them, by the minority, at the late session of Congress, they who expressed your sentiments in public debate, were not more devoted to your cause, than that part of the firm phalanx, who either from want of a habit of public speaking, or from bodily infirmity, took little part in the public debate. These last were among your most wise and safe counsellors—with one of whom I had the honor lately to receive the public approbation of an assembly of citizens, at the neighbouring city of Cincinnati, of which any man might feel an honest and patriotic pride. The approbation of such assemblies as that, and the one I now address, is indeed the highest reward of a public man, if, in truth, his country's good be the real object of his exertions—assemblies, composed of patriotic gentlemen, of the heads of society, seeking no private emolument; rallying in support of the principles of their constitutional liberty which they conscientiously believe to be in danger."

"In looking around we for a man faithful to our principles, thank Heaven we are not destitute of men to save them. We have remaining to us a Clay, a McLean of Ohio, and a Webster—without going any further, and we are not half ruined, yet."

"Let us now take a look at those dignitaries of the land, the Secretary of the State, and Vice, President of the United States—a look at that "double reign" of the would be Percy of his North, and Prince of Wales of the South, and see if their public course furnish no proof that the last Presidential struggle was a mere contest for office, with them. We all saw how amicably they co-operated in the unhallowed work of pulling down the late administration so much easier than making a better—how all the strifes of former rivalry were allayed, (no corrupt bargain, intrigue, and coalition, I hope;) and all their wide differences of political opinion and constitutional construction different almost as the equatorial heat and polar cold, were seemingly reconciled, and both then political Jonah's have buried forever!

Their first grand object is attained by their combined efforts; Mr. Adams is defeated, and Mr. Clay goes home to see about his farm and his cotton bagging.

"The two friends being now at leisure, from mere motives of curiosity, (inherited from Eve, no doubt) in the veil of futurity, just so high as to catch a glimpse of the prospective succession to the Presidency! It instantly becomes a distant bone of contention between them!

"I have read a story somewhere, gentlemen, but where upon my soul I cannot tell you, that an ancient Greek sage, rambling one day in the suburbs of Athens, saw two dogs most amicably playing together upon a beautiful green; as a philosophical experiment, to see how strong and disinterested their friendship was, he threw a half picked bone between them; they instantly ceased their play and commenced a furious fight over the bone, which raged until their fears were aroused by the roar of a distant lion (I presume he must have been a reformed lion, sent from Africa to enjoy private life in the vicinity of Athens,) when, with one instinctive impulse they bristled up and faced towards the common enemy, in perfect union!

"Just so with these two American friends—put them in battle array, on the terrace west of the capitol, if you choose, at pistol's mouth and rattan flourish, and let only some lounging urchin, returning home from school, through mere habit, contracted in the late contest, unthinkingly exclaim, 'Hurra for HENRY CLAY,' their roused combatants would voluntarily turn their united arms towards 'Old Kentucky.'"

"The General Post Office Department stands a conspicuous monument to the fact of the last having been a contest for office.

"The fact is now well known, that if the late Post master General would have stooped to the terms of rendering the department a mere instrument of rewarding the personal adherents, and punishing the opponents of the President, he might have been Post Master General still. He rejected the terms. Another accepted them with the office. Draw your own inferences. Was there any bargain, management and corruption there?"

"Last, though not least, comes the multitudinous class of subaltern and non-commissioned office hunters, who effected the revolution, and achieved the conquest, and distribution of the Treasury. The proportion of the non commissioned, we learn, is very great. There were not offices enough for them all, and they wage a. mong themselves over the spoils. They seem to have no fixed law of distribution, and occasionally patronize each other.

"In the middle ages, when the Northern barbarians overrun Gaul and divided her spoils among themselves, a numerous & victorious horde one day sacked a city, and a temple of worship, upon the Rhine. Clovis, their King and leader, saw a beautiful vase upon the altar, which he seized as his share of the spoil; when a bold brigand of the ranks, stepped up to the vase, struck it rudely with his battle axe, and swore by his idols that the King himself should not take spoil, but according to their established law of distribution. Clovis dissembled his anger, for the time, and submitted to the law. There was honor and rule among each other there. Not so here.

"Kentucky is one of the stock raising and hog driving States. Let any Kentuckian who had not an opportunity to be at Washington at the inauguration, or during this reign, take a single ear of corn next fall, and throw it among a head of three or four hundred hogs—he will then have an adequate idea of the absence of law and total confusion, in the distribution of the spoil, among this numerous class of victors.—They went for office, altogether for office, and for nothing else but office, from Clovis to the brigand.

"But let us return to a more worthy subject—the honest and patriotic, but deceived and abandoned classes, of both parties in the late Presidential contest.

"Should these, in their disappointment, turn their eyes upon the so much dreaded and hated Henry Clay, could even the present administration be surprised at it? Among his countrymen I have nothing to say of his unwavering attachment to our principles, of his transcendent abilities to maintain them, or of his ripe experience to secure them. This is Kentucky. There has been enough pointing at him by the present administration, to have turned the eyes of the civilized world upon him."

"Deceived, betrayed, and disappointed as we are, let us pursue our principles; and to whatever man they lead us, sacrifice local and personal antipathies, if any we have, upon the altar of our country, and in him support her cause. With that view, I offer this sentiment for the approbation of this assembly:

"ROTATION IN OFFICE.—Its true Spirit it is, when a people find that an officer does not fulfil the purposes of his appointment, or election, to put in his place, one who WILL."