The New Hampshire Gazette

STATE RIGHTS.

The following article from the Richmond Enquirer, is appended as a note to a communication in which the writer had made some allusions to the editors as having been tardy in upholding the doctrines of State rights. It is due to the editors of that paper to say, that situated as they are, the course they have pursued, is an independent one, and that in the middle ground, they have sustained between nullification on the one hand and consolidation on the other, they have rendered the country and the administration much service. They have, it is true, differed from the President on some of the doctrines contained in his proclamation, and they thought the passage of the enforcing bill unnecessary; but they have not, for this, abandoned the President who has done so much since his first election to sustain the cause of State rights and the democratic principles of '98 and '99, and who has, in all cases, evinced himself practically, a zealous and cordial friend of State rights, as well as a friend of the Union.

They have not taken the course of the nullifiers, who laud Mr. Clay to the skies for granting the pitiful boon contained in his boasted compromise, while they abuse the President who has on all occasions evinced a disposition to give them a tariff containing every provision they could ask for.

We doubt whether there be any paper in the United States, that can be said to have rendered the President and his administration such efficient support, as the Richmond Enquirer, or to which the real democracy of the country is so much indebted.

"We must take the liberty of correcting this assertion of our intelligent correspondent—whose strictures will no doubt receive from another quarter the respect to which they are entitled.—

For the last 18 months we have expressed the same opinions about the right of secession, as Pendleton affirms we have "at length declared." It is the opinion which P. P. Barbour expressed in his reply to the Shoccoe meeting. We are opposed to all consolidating doctrines, come from what quarter they may—even though they should be found in the Proclamation of a man, whom we believe to be a conscientious friend of his country. On another point, we have the misfortune to differ with the author of Pendleton. We never did despair of the Republic. in infinitely darker days than these. When there was not a State, besides Virginia, which resolutely raised the banner of State Rights—when Webster struck at them with a giant arm—when Clay pointed at a Virginian with a sneer and an exclamation "There goes a State Rights man!"—when Calhoun was a federalist in all his doctrines, and not only in his devotion to the Bank and to Internal Improvement, but to the Tariff—when almost every distinguished citizen of South-Carolina, except Judge William Smith and a few others, treated the Virginia doctrines as dissonant nonsense—when McDuffie wrote his "One of the People." to prove that the States were little more than contemptible political corporations, and that they had no right to interpose and to cross the path of the encroachments of the Federal Government—we did not then despair of the cause of State Rights. Why then should we despair now? Is not the Press free? Is not Truth great, and will she not prevail ?— Have we not gallant allies now to assist us? Have we not friends from Maine and New-Hampshire on the one hand, to Georgia on the other, prepared to come to the rescue? True; we have still errors on both sides to encounter. We have to combat the extremes of both parties. On the one side, our cause is assailed by men, who would rush into consolidation. On the other hand, it is assailed by the nullifiers, who, under their illegitimate notions of State Rights, forget what is due to the noble Union of the States. We know, that there are men who would abuse the sacred name of State Rights, to further their own factious or ambitious purposes. We know it is now fashionable to cry out, that State Rights are gone. (Far be it from us to ascribe the slightest improper motive to the author of Pendleton.) We know it is the cant of some, that even the good Old Dominion is wronged, insulted and degraded.—But the time is coming when all this smoke will blow away—when the great mass of the people will not be ultras on the one side or the other—when they will learn to distinguish between the cant of fanaticism and the voice of truth—when they will equally repudiate the errors of the Proclamation, and the madness of Nullification—when they will re-adjust the centripetal and the centrifugal powers of their political system—when they will tie down the Federal Government to a strict construction of their limited Constitution—and when they will guard with the most cautious jealousy both the Rights of the States and the Union of the States. We have gone for these principles, and we shall still go for them. We cannot consent to ostracise a patriot who has done so much for the Rights of the States as Andrew Jackson—and yet we will not swallow the errors of his Proclamation. We have no inducement to sacrifice one iota of our principles upon the shrine of power. We have asked nothing of him, and we shall accept nothing. We have received no splendid office at his hands. We have not largely fed at the public crib at Washington.—There is not a friend or a kinsman upon the face of the earth whom we have recommended, or will recommend to office. We have no personal acquaintance with Gen. Jackson—but because we will not denounce a man, whom we believe to be a patriot, as a blood-thirsty tyrant, we shall be held up and denounced by the nullifiers or by factious fanatics, as his tools, his sycophants, and as apostates. Be it so. "Let the galled jade wince—Our withers are unwrung." We despise all such denunciations all such "wars of epithets." We have long taken our course, and with the best discretion we could exert. 'We are satisfied with it. We firmly believe we are right—and we will not despair of the Republic. Our whole political life furnishes the best pledge to the public, that we never have despaired of the Rights of the States, and that we never will abandon them.".