Kentucky Gazette

From the Richmond Enquirer.

Bell's Messenger, of March 28, charges the 'American people' with 'republican ambition'—and this charge is dictated at the moment of our acquiring Florida. But is it ambition merely to obtain territory that we want? For, as some of our rivers ran through it, those citizens who border on them are without the certain means of carrying their products to market. We want it too to screen our border citizens from a savage race that nestle in that territory, whom Spain is unable to control. We want it too for the purpose of putting an end to the smuggling goods, and of slaves into our country. And we want it lest an enemy should take it to carry on his attacks upon us, as the British wished to do in the late war. But if this be ambition, what shall be said of the conquests of Great Britain in the East? where plunder and dominion are the only inducements. The Messenger hints, that we shall next covet the British West India islands; that, indeed, with the exception of Jamaica, all the Caribbean islands are at our mercy. But it is obviously not our interest to attach these islands to the United States. Our country is sufficiently large for our ambition. It is peculiarly against the genius of our institutions to own one inch of foreign possessions, one single colony.

But where is this ambition? Is it in our giving it up peaceably to Spain, (after Jackson took it) and then getting it fairly by purchase?