The Mississippi Creole

The Plainest kind of talk.

The Ohio Statesman, the Locofoco State paper at Columbus, handles Polk's Veto on the River and Harbor bill after a fashion of which the following extracts will give some faint idea:

The Message in which the President supports his views, is a shallow performance, vulgar in its language, ridiculous for its false logic, and paltry as the treatment of a thesis by some hair-splitting and wire-drawing schoolman of the Middle Ages, who thought himself a great man, because, like all small characters, he had mistaken cunning for wisdom. It is, however, quite worthy the man whose imbecility has been so unhappily displayed in his action on the Oregon question—first uttering boasts of the loudest kind, and then sneaking off to cover when the enemy's bay was faintly heard in the distance. There is a remarkable similarity in the President's conduct on these two subjects. As he mouthed and raved about our "clear and unquestionable" right to the whole of Oregon, like unto one of Nat Lee's Bedlamite heroes—for we can only call it mouthing and raving, when the bathos of the treaty is known to us, however much it pleased us at the time of its utterance, because we believed it to be the warm language of earnestness and sincerity—so has he vetoed a bill substantially recommended by himself, through the report of the Secretary of War, a high officer of his cabinet. It is true that the defence has been set up for him, that the Secretary, though reporting through the President, really reports to Congress. Granted—but this does not in the slightest degree alter the case. It has always been considered—at least it was in those days when it was thought that some degree of profound statesmanship was necessary in governing a great nation—that a cabinet should support one uniform policy, as speaking the sentiments of the party whose principles it was appointed to aid in carrying out. Who ever heard of a high cabinet officer recommending to Congress, through the President, a course of action directly contrary to that of the President himself, and actually accompanied with the proper estimates as to the cost of carrying it out—who ever heard of anything of the kind, we ask, before these days of deception and palpable fraud? What President, with a decent portion of self-respect, ever practised such small intrigue? It is new in the history of our country, and no doubt found its origin and motive in the desire to deceive some members of Congress in the support of measures which the Executive feared might not otherwise prove successful. As the great words about Oregon were followed by the smallest possible actions and were intended only to gull honest men, so was the course of the President on the subject of improving harbors and rivers favorable, only with the design of gaining votes for the new Tariff bill, the Administration not having faith enough to believe that one righteous measure could stand without practising a little falsehood on another. We most earnestly hope that the day is now coming, when every true democrat will have, in bitterness of heart, to ask pardon of God and man for having aided in elevating to power, men who mistake treachery for good conduct, and paltry shifts for great statesmanship.