Vermont Watchman And State Journal

THE PRESIDENT OF THE U. STATES AND WM. LYON MCKENZIE.

We profess to have as much respect for the Chief Magistrate of our country as any honest well informed man ought to have: and no more respect for William Lyon McKenzie than any human being well acquainted with his character, history, sacrifice and sufferings, in what he believes to be the great cause of human liberty, must have. And yet, if what he, William Lyon McKenzie, says of President Van Buren in the paragraph that follows, be not a wilful and shameless falsehood, without a shadow of truth to justify the charge, we would rather be William Lyon McKenzie, at this moment a prisoner for life in the American Bastile, than Martin Van Buren, President of the United States of America. The affair of the Caroline is unatoned for. The insult, instead of being explained, is justified. The outrage is burnt into our forehead, "by heaping the offender with honors, titles and rewards; just as it was after the attack by the Leopard on the Chesapeake, which led to the last war. Her captain was knighted, and now McNabb is knighted. Be it so. We deserve it—and so long as we choose to bear it, we have no business to complain—no business to feel. The North Eastern boundary question too—and that of the Oregon Territory—will there never be a day of retribution for these wrongs?

But to the point. With all these outrages and insults unatoned for, unexcused, unexplained, McKenzie tells us on the authority of Mr. Klein, a member of Congress from old Pennsylvania, that it has been suggested by the President of the United States, that the friends of McKenzie ought to "appeal to the magnanimity of the resident Minister of the British power in North America, at his request!" in which case "the President" the President of these United States! "would then grant McKenzie his liberty, and relieve the question from the embarrassment in which it seems involved!"

Can this be true? Can it be! that the Chief Magistrate of the great Commonwealth of Nations is capable of maneuvering in this roundabout way to influence a British Minister resident at Washington to pardon a State prisoner in the American Bastile, over which the President has full power? Just think of it! an application, at his request, to Mr. Fox, the very man who told him, not six weeks ago, that Governor Fairfield of Maine was more scared than hurt, and that there were no forts built, when there were no less than three: and only a corporal's guard or so, instead of two or three skeleton regiments, as there are, crowding upon the disputed territory! WHAT NEXT? —N. Y. Signal.