Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

"OLD OFFICE."

We are now once more snugly placed in the full enjoyment of "dignified retirement," with leisure for three months to contemplate our own happiness and the wisdom of those rulers to whom we owe the blessing. But all true believers are obliged to profess their full faith, that this "solemn stillness" will speedily be followed by the "confused noise of the battle of the warrior"—that the present inactivity is only the contracting of the muscles for a mighty, and tremendous effort—that it is the couching of the lion, that he may be able to spring, with more certain and dreadful effect, upon his devoted prey. Not exactly before the breaking up of the ice, but certainly before the fourth of July, we are to take possession of the Spanish provinces on the south; to "break up the rogues harbour" in Canada and expel the British from the American Continent: besides chastising "our red brethren" of the West, and driving them beyond the Mississippi.

All this sounds nobly on the eve of an election: but is it likely to be done? Is it even intended to be done or attempted? We do not believe it. The embargo is not to be considered as the precursor of war, unless indeed, it should come unwelcomely and unexpectedly from the other side of the Atlantic. As a war measure its design and operation would be, to preserve our property from the grasp of a maritime enemy in the first moments of hostility. But we have seen the eagerness of all parties, as well those in the confidence and secrets of the administration as others. to incur that risk, labouring day and night to push their property beyond the reach of our own paternal and protecting government, into the very hands of the contemplated enemy.