Weekly National Intelligencer

National Honor.

The following strikes us as not only good morality, but as (what is another thing of much value when it can be found) sound sense:

"The Locofocos in the repudiating States are holding meetings and denouncing Great Britain. If these gentlemen would pay that country what they owe her, they would act much more like honest men. Pay Great Britain first and whip her afterwards, Messrs. Repudiators! To keep her money and to thrash her too, is rather more affliction than you ought to wish to bring upon your worst enemy. If honor "pricks you on" to go to war with England, does not honor also "prick you on" to the payment of what you owe her? It is a very questionable sort of honor, indeed, which pockets a man's cash and whips him afterwards."—Louisville Jour.

Mississippi and Arkansas, Illinois and Indiana and Pennsylvania are, through their entire Locofocoism, rampant for war with Britain. Possibly they would be less bellicose, were they, like some other States, out of debt or nearer to the enemy. Othello, we think it is, makes a reflection which we have always looked upon as decidedly rational, considering that he set up for being a gentleman and talked about "the plumed troop and the big wars."

He remarked, like a sensible fellow,

"But why should honor outlive honesty?"

For, after all, if honor be one of the chief graces of life—one of its ornaments—a sort of Corinthian capital of society—still, it must have a pillar, and a base to stand upon. It is a delightful luxury; but honesty is the main necessary of life; and what signify all elegancies of life, if a man has neither meat nor bread?

By-the-by, we will tell our Western friend a Southern story, which, however, he will easily see dates back a good deal beyond repudiation. We knew in the Carolinas of two Southern gentlemen who, being friends, the one lent and the other borrowed a large sum of money. But, inasmuch as this business of lending a friend money implies very often the loss of the friend, if not the money too, our debtor and creditor fell out. Whereupon the former sent word to the latter that, being in his debt, he held that he could not fairly fight him, and that his loan was too heavy to be liquidated in less than four or five years; but that with the last payment he should send him a challenge. The other, of course, could make no objection to this double liquidation, placed in that right order of integrity first and punctilio afterwards. Well, they lived on upon these notorious terms until the entire amount was punctually refunded; and then the borrower, his probity safe, thought he could indulge his honor. So he sent his cartel; it was accepted with a due sense of his punctuality, and they fought, the ex-creditor breaking one of the ex-debtor's arms, and the ex-debtor shooting him down with a wound nearly mortal.

Now, we do not say that these parties did well to shoot at each other for an offence five years old. Nay, we think there is often as much honor in not quarrelling as there can afterwards be in fighting. But if, under such circumstances, there was to be fighting, this it seems to us was the only honorable way of doing it. And we hope that either Mississippi, Arkansas, &c. will send a message such as we have mentioned to Great Britain, or that the General Government, seeing how those States are situated, will send the message for them. Though opposed, under present circumstances, to the General Government taking upon itself the debts of the States, we trust it will not think of going to war with Great Britain without making some provision to vindicate the national reputation in that particular.