Nashville Patriot

A Solution of the Problem.

As it is admitted on all hands that the relations between the General Government and the Territories of the Union constitute at present the most prominent topic of political discussion, it becomes important to lay before our readers all expressions of public sentiment directed to a settlement of this vexed question; and these various manifestations of popular opinion, if possessing a current interest as belonging to the politics of the day, may also be properly given as preliminary to the more formal treatment which we shall soon proceed to give the subject, in accordance with the purpose already announced to our readers.

We therefore cite from the columns of the leading Democratic paper published at the capital of Pennsylvania the subjoined resolutions, which, it seems, were recently adopted by the Democracy of Butler county, in that State, and to which a conspicuous place is assigned by our Harrisburg contemporary, as presenting, we suppose, a happy solution of the Territorial problem in its bearing on slave property—the only aspect in which it is presumed to have any significance or interest:

Resolved, That on the question of the settlement of negro slavery in the Territories we adhere firmly to the doctrine of popular sovereignty, in opposition to the tyrannical doctrine of intervention by Congress. We recognize in this the Democratic doctrine, that the will of the people legally and constitutionally expressed shall govern, and regard it as a just concession to State rights and to the equality of the States.

Resolved, That we would sincerely regret that irreconcilable differences of opinion should arise in the Democratic party about the time or manner in which this excellent principle is to be applied to the settlement of negro slavery in the Territories, regarding, as we do, the unity of the Democratic party as essential to the preservation of our free institutions."

We have no comments to offer upon this ingenious and compendious method of dispatching a troublesome topic of controversy, except merely to say that, in the judgment of many, the excellence of "popular sovereignty," as a "principle" of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, is suspected to be quite largely dependent on the very points respecting which the sterling Democracy of Butler county deprecate any "irreconcilable differences of opinion;" for, if we mistake not, the only division of sentiment on this subject, as differently regarded by different wings of the Democracy, relates precisely to the time when and the manner in which the "excellent principle" shall be applied to the government of the Territories; and we may say that in these respects Popular Sovereignty does but share in a disadvantage common to all other "excellent principles," which are generally found to depend more or less for their virtue on just such subsidiary considerations as the Pennsylvania Democracy would prudently hide out of sight in any appreciation of their great measure, whose value it seems is indubitable, only on condition that its patrons shall agree to carefully abstain from inquiring too critically wherein its value consists.—National Intelligencer.