The Native American

WASHINGTON.

Our Country-always right-but, right or wrong, our Country.

SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1838.

OFFICE ON E STREET, IN THE SQUARE IMMEDIATELY WEST OF THE BURNT POST OFFICE.

DR. T. D. JONES, Editor pro tempore.

TO NATIVE AMERICANS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY:

Fellow-Citizens: I am directed, by the President and Council of the Native American Association of the United States at Washington City, to invite you to form in the different counties and cities of the several States, auxiliary Native Associations to be united with us in this cause.

I am also instructed to call your attention to the necessity of authorizing a committee of such of those societies as may be formed, to prepare, in your name, memorials to Congress; to be presented at the early part of the ensuing session, praying for a repeal of the laws of naturalization.

Your fellow-countryman,

HENRY J. BRENT.

Corresponding Sec'ry. of the Native Am. Association of the U. S., Wash, Lily.

APPOINTMENT BY THE PRESIDENT,

"By and with the advice and consent of the Senate:

Felix Grundy, of the U. S. Senate, to be Attorney General of the United States.

Our readers will see in another column that our brethren of this Association, celebrated the day commemorative of American Independence, by an oration and a dinner. It has been some years since we witnessed so full a manifestation of public spirit, and perhaps never, on any occasion, so much fervor and devotion to the objects of any particular purpose. Generally the civic feasts have been of a party character, where the inspiration of the hour has been borrowed from the hope of future reward, and where the triumph of men has been the desire, rather than the success of principles. On this occasion the petty currents of politics were lost in the great expanse and deep toned feelings of patriotism, and men of all creeds, and sects, and parties were here united at the altar of their country to offer up their prayers for her welfare.

We have, through this Press, attempted to rouse our countrymen to a sense of their danger: we have proclaimed week after week, that thousands, and tens of thousands of the refuse of Europe, are pouring in upon us, almost daily; that the poor-houses and the jails of distant lands are emptying upon our shores, and that the laborers and the mechanics of our own country are ousted from employment by the ready strangers who swarm among us. The proclamation of these truths has operated beneficially wherever men could detach themselves from the influence of politicians, or reason away their fears that the establishment of a native party throughout the Union would destroy their own.

Gradually our people are beginning to comprehend the distinction between the benefits of factions and the welfare of the whole, and there are hundreds of thousands who, will, before many months, be members of our brotherhood, who are now, either not advised of the institution of our Society, or who, if apprised of it, do not see the singleness of our purpose and the expediency, and indeed, necessity of our action. The City of Washington has, as compared with the other cities, but a small population, a great portion of which consists of transient foreigners, lured here by the encouragement of their own countrymen who immediately aid them in obtaining situations in public office or on the public work, and of persons holding small offices under government, and whose voices and energies are silenced by the fear of losing their places operating upon their wants and their devotion to their families. Taking these things into consideration, it has, by the efforts of the remaining few, acted its part nobly in originating, and thus far sustaining this cause, and in its endeavors to spread this religion of nature, this love of our own country and countrymen to every quarter of the land. Without union, however, we can do nothing. And though, like Cassandra, we warn Troy of its danger, the prophetic voice of truth will avail but little, if those who are to meet the peril will take no measures to avoid it.

Fellow countrymen, we beseech you by all the love of Republicanism, by your attachment to your country, by a desire for future peace and the preservation of this land for yourselves, to put your shoulders to the wheel, and help the cause. We do not raise our voice for the sake of personal interest--it is not in our behalf we speak--it is not for the mercenary profits which labor may claim or talent or service be entitled to. But it is to encourage our brethren in every town and village to step forth in the promotion of Native Associations--to petition the Legislatures of the States to modify the laws so as to put the elective franchise exclusively in the hands of our own people, so as to be a nation of Americans possessing an individual character in the family of nations, and not a segregated mass of inhabitants having neither a common language, a common interest, nor even a home in common only with ourselves.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGNERS.

In our last we adverted to the appointment of a son of the editor of that foreign and miscalled print the "Truth Teller" of New York, as a cadet in the Military Academy at West Point, while, no doubt, there were hundreds of applicants, native Americans, the sons of men who had, in some form or other, rendered the State some service, but who were made to give way to the unknown pretensions of this progeny of an alien, this abuser of American principles, American rights, and Americans, and yet the favored and successful admirer of our offices and our money. Often have we wondered that although there are scores of our countrymen, who, perhaps through a long life as merchants, have individually paid into the coffers of our Treasury millions of revenue, and who, from the reverses of fortune, have been obliged to ask employment from the Government they so long supported, the very places they supplicated for in vain have been given to raw Irishmen, or illiterate Germans, or to profligates of all the world, while they were allowed to sink on their own homes, in the miseries of old age, unnoticed, poor, helpless, and despised. Is this right? Is this the way to kindle the flame of patriotism, or to prevent that which now burns in our bosoms from being extinguished? Is there any system of ethics, any scheme of reasoning that can justify it? Is there any excusing circumstance to give it, in the minds of patriots, honest and just men, even a color of palliation? If there be, if sophistry can so pervert or so charm the judgment, and, like the hellebore, lull all sense to sleep, then let us hear, or, like Anthony, we give it ears, and pause for a reply.

Since then, it is announced that our Chief Magistrate, regardless of public opinion, careless of ultimate consequences, and with the seeming desire to augment the Swiss corps that already panders to the great man's appetite throughout the land, has added another wound to the already injured feelings and mortified pride of his countrymen, by appointing another foreigner as post master at Buffalo. The correspondent of the Intelligencer complains that "so great is his ignorance that he has been obliged to call upon his neighbors to decipher his letters; and that, being a foreigner, the probability is he is but imperfectly acquainted with the English language."

Is such conduct as this the permitted privilege of politicians? and can they, under the sanction of party, transfer the birthrights of the natives to the subjects of other nations? If it can be so, and must be borne while such a sanction exists, then our people should be advised, in order that their rights may be reclaimed from the effect of fiction, which imposes the duty of patriotism upon them, while it gives the profits of it to others.

We are of no party, except we should be called, what we claim to be and glory in being called, the Native American Party. We desire sincerely, in this labor of love for our brothers and for our land, to work out their redemption from the personal and political curses of foreign interference, without touching the ordinary career of this or any other administration; but when we see the head of this administration, in his own person, unfurling the murky flag of distant regions, "hanging the banner on the outer wall," as a panoply for the refugees of all nations and the outcasts of all morality, and then rewarding them for their votes and clamors by commissions of the posts of honor and profit, we are by necessity compelled to turn to our own countrymen and spread our stars and stripes to the world, that mankind may see the strife between the politicians and the patriots, and history record hereafter how an insulted and injured people had to battle at their own threshold against native leaders and pensioned strangers.

In other countries the King who would attempt to transfer the public confidence from his own subjects to those of another nation, would be termed a traitor. In this country, treason may rear its front when patronage gilds the crime, and while party, spoils, and foreigners combine, the culprits escape the penalties, and the people suffer.

Go on then in the conflict. If it be wise to station foreigners in high places and natives in none, or only enough to save you from the imputation of exclusiveness--if it suits ambition to wave the banner of many colors against the "bits of striped bunting" of the Union--if men in office cry aloud to the Irishmen of Randon's bloody troops and the cowardly Hessians who murdered your patriots and plundered your possessions in ancient days, when liberty shrieked at their doings--if they will do this for ambition, then plant the standards, divide the country into foreigners and natives, dissolve political distinctions, and when the war comes which they are now preparing, let the blood of your martyred countrymen rise up from the earth and with eternal curses call out the names of the traitors who did the wrongs.