Alexandria Daily Advertiser

For what purpose was the federal government formed? What reasons induced the individual states to enter into the national compact? For the better protection of commerce, we emphatically answer. To the protection of life, liberty, reputation, property, the different state governments were fully competent; but commerce, to be directed with skill, and prosecuted with success, required a unity of action, to be supported by a unity of force.

From this necessity spring all the powers of the general government, and to this end ought all their measures to be directed.

How have our present rulers discharged this duty? How have they fulfilled this great trust of the people? By withdrawing from the ocean—by locking up our vessels in port—by shutting up our surplus produce to rot in our granaries and warehouses—by driving our sailors, riggers, rope-makers, and all the laboring classes immediately dependent on commerce, to a foreign clime to seek that bread which is here denied them—by a cowardly abandonment of that which it was our duty to protect, and for the protection of which they had been armed with the physical force of the nation—nay, more—by deliberately destroying that which they were most sacredly bound to cherish by every means in their power.

In common affairs, when an agent perverts the powers of his agency, and employs them for purposes hostile to his principal, he is held unworthy longer to be trusted, and is stripped of his powers. This rule of action is founded on justice and common sense—on the great duty of self preservation, and therefore must be of universal application, in public as well as private affairs. The administrators of our government are the agents of the people, vested with specific powers, for the attainment of specific ends. If, then, they have abused those powers, or perverted those ends (and that they have done so, requires no ingenuity to prove—the nation feels it, or must soon feel it) a remedy is only to be found in a dismissal. It is the course to which reason and experience point—it is the course in which security will be found—it is the course which the people must eventually pursue.

But "if, when done, 'twere well it were done quickly." This remedy cannot be too soon applied. The wounds already inflicted on our prosperity are deep and difficult to heal. They are every day irritated by the ruinous prescriptions of political quackery, and if not put under the care of more skilful physicians, the political body must sink into paralysis or expire in a convulsion.

(Wash. Fed.)