Semi Weekly Standard

MESSRS. BADGER AND KERR.

We come forward, as a Southern man and friend of the Union, to do justice to political opponents. We have read with much gratification the recent speech of Mr. Senator Badger in favor of the Nebraska and Kansas bill. It is one of the ablest speeches of his long political life. We do not, we feel bound to state, approve all he has said; but we are with him in his advocacy of the measure, and we sympathize profoundly with him in the views he has expressed generally on the question of slavery. He has spoken more directly, more clearly, more fervently than on any former occasion. We learn that his speech created a marked impression in the Senate.

Mr. Kerr, in his speech on the same question on Friday last, assumed high ground. It is a speech strongly Southern in its tone. He thanked God, in concluding, that the time had at last arrived when the people of the South were united to a man in defence of their rights.

We scorn to impeach motives—we look at the acts of public men, and judge them accordingly. Nor do we feel disposed to go into the history of the past on this question; we stand where we have always stood upon it, and it is enough for us that all Southern men who deserve the name, without reference to party distinctions and former associations, are rallying to the defence of our rights under the common Constitution.