Burlington Free Press

SPIRIT OF THE TIMES.

We copy the following from an administration paper in the northern part of N. York,-the Franklin Gazette.

It is a cause of deep regret to every lover of his country, or his country's honor, to witness the apathy, nay, the culpable indifference, of the Federal Government to the insults almost daily offered to our flag, and the flagrant violation of our rights as an independent and free nation, by the self-styled Mistress of the Ocean, no less than its cowardly subserviency to the wishes and demands of Great Britain. Are we longer to submit, after the decisive report of the commissioners appointed by Maine, to encroachments upon our territory and jurisdiction, on our Northeastern frontier? Are we to allow, without even a remonstrance, the growing influence and even sovereignty of Britain over our western territories and Indiana? Are we tamely to suffer vessels to be cut out of our harbors-to be fired upon line after line-our property forcibly taken from us, and our citizens daily insulted and even murdered, without demanding that satisfaction which even the weakest state in Europe would insist on, even at the hands of arrogant Britain? Verily, if this is to be so, have we polite and gentlemanly rulers, who scorn to seek any other means of redress from a Lady Queen than acquiescence or entreaty. But this we hope is not the character of the President's Message, which ere this has been laid before Congress, but that its tone may be such as will arouse the whole American people, to wash from their hitherto fair National Escutcheon, the deep stains which have been corroding and festering there.

JUSTICE.

After the above was penned, and in type, probably, the message was received, but which the reader is aware but poorly realizes the expectations of "Justice." The editor of the Gazette, however, disposes of the subject with the following manly comment.

We will not allow the occasion to pass, however, without expressing our decided and unqualified disapprobation of the views advanced and conclusions drawn by the President in relation to the Boundary and Frontier questions. The important question of the Northeastern Boundary of the Republic, which has been in dispute for upwards of twenty years, and frequently threatened to involve the United States and Great Britain in a bloody war, is passed over with a brief paragraph of a few lines. The frontier excitement in favor of the liberty seeking Canadians, and the disposition manifested by portions of our citizens to do by them as Lafayette did by us when we were situated in similar circumstances, are taken up at some length and treated in a manner which cannot fail to prove acceptable and satisfactory to the petticoat tyrant who guides the destinies of the British realm. The President reiterates the principles of the proclamation, of which we expressed our opinion last week. He does not bestow a single word upon the cutting out and burning of the Steamboat Caroline by a British armed force, while lying in an American harbor. The murder of our citizens, the repeated invasion of our territory, the firing upon our boats, and the many unprovoked and insufferable wrongs and insults heaped upon our people along the frontier by the loyalists of Canada, appear to have entirely escaped the notice of the President, not the remotest allusion being made to any of them in the message. The, we suppose, is, in the opinion of the President, all well enough, and no more than we deserve, for presuming in defiance of his proclamations to the contrary, to express our sympathies for the cruelly oppressed people of Canada, and for rendering them such aid and assistance as we have an undoubted right to under the Constitution.

"The Proclamation of the President touching our treaty obligations, &c., meets with universal approbation on this frontier."

-Plattsburgh Republican.

It is hardly necessary for us to say that the above statement is utterly destitute of truth, for the readers of the Gazette already know it to be so. The writer could not have been ignorant of this fact when he penned it. So far from the assertion being true, we believe we hazard nothing in declaring that no document ever emanated from the Chief Magistrate of this country which met with such universal and deserved censure and disapprobation on this frontier as Mr. Van Buren's late Proclamation of Neutrality. If the editor of the Republican was ignorant of this, he at least knew that it did not meet with universal approbation, for he had unquestionably become acquainted with our opinion of it before he made the statement above quoted, and that formed one exception. We now tell the Republican that we have the satisfaction to know that our views of that document are those entertained by nearly the entire population in this section, and among the democracy we do not know of a single exception.-Fort Covington Gazette.

The above are both administration papers: but the editor of the Republican