Daily National Intelligencer

THE SENATE.

We perceive, certainly with no emotions of regret, that the recent doings of the Senate of the United States have excited a wholesome spirit of enquiry among the people, and particularly among the constituents of those Republican Senators who have separated from the Party, and united with the Federalists in embarrassing the councils of their country. The result of this enquiry is to be seen in the proceedings of various public meetings, and in the numerous expressions of popular opinion through other channels. But whatever propriety there may be in this mode of apprizing the senators in question of the light in which their conduct is viewed, we do not feel ourselves bound, nor indeed have we room were we so inclined, to volunteer in the republication of these various comments. The proceedings of the meeting in Windsor relative to Mr. Stone, in regard to our publication of which something has been said by the New York Columbian and by other prints of much less respectability, were forwarded to us as an advertisement: the insertion of which we did not feel ourselves at liberty to decline—any more than we did the proposition for a Russian Dinner, which we advertised for the Georgetown Federalists in April and May last. And, we can inform the Columbian editor, that if the people of New York shall think proper to censure the conduct of Gen. German, of that State, than whom no man has more uniformly and perversely misrepresented the party by whom he was (ostensibly) chosen, or of any other public officer, of any grade, we shall advertise their proceedings with perhaps less hesitation than we felt in the case of Judge Stone.

We beg leave here to enter our protest against the doctrine of senatorial infallibility, set up by the factious prints which officiously interpose themselves between the senate and the people, and too much sanctioned in other quarters. We hold the official conduct of all public men to be a fair subject of discussion. It is the right of every citizen to censure or approve, in decent terms, those whom his voice has assisted to place in office. We claimed and exercised no other right, in the remarks we have heretofore offered on this topic—and he is certainly misled by the bias of his own particular prejudices in regard to the subject of our remarks, who supposes that in so doing we have committed a "breach of privilege," or subjected ourselves to a "call to the bar of the senate," to answer for the high crime of daring to express our opinion of the acts of that honorable body. That august assembly, removed as it is by sexennial tenure from the people, is yet not so far elevated as to be ex-officio exempt from censure or reproach. If however our comments have been groundless, or too severe, the friends of the dissenting senators may console them with Addison's remark, that "a statesman, who is possessed of real merit, should look upon his political censurers with the same neglect that a good writer regards his critics." It is to be hoped, that in expressing our coincidence in this sentiment, we shall once agree with those from whom it is our pleasure and our pride frequently to differ in opinion.