Daily National Intelligencer

We are sorry to find, from some remarks in the Aurora of Tuesday, that the National Intelligencer is not regularly received by the editor of that paper. We are more fortunate in the receipt of the Aurora, which we should be sorry to miss; for we are sometimes honored by the notice of its editor, of which we should regret at any time to be unapprised. In the very paper in which the complaint is made, notice is taken of an observation of ours, respecting Cadmus's ridiculous project for a Convention of the People to regulate the Banks. With such light as reason lends us, we have considered the arguments of the Aurora on this subject, and are yet not convinced. So far from it, as we have not been allowed to express our opinion on the subject, without attracting sarcasm and reproach, neither shall we be deterred, by fear of their reiteration, from repeating our offence.

The reasoning by which the proposition is now defended in the Aurora is really more notable than the suggestion itself. We are told that the tariff of duties on imports was the work of profligacy and imbecility; that the representatives of the people are servile and incompetent; that dollars bear a price in the market of 8 per cent. above their nominal value; and that the folly of the court paper, as the National Intelligencer is pleasantly called, is on a par with the measures of the court! This is the sort of argument by which it is attempted to sustain a proposition for a convention of the people. How is a convention to regulate the price of dollars? Or to regulate the banks? On these points we are not enlightened; but we are informed that the convention project is "a resort to first principles." Let us denude the proposition of all disguise. Every project for amending the constitution, or for legislation, otherwise than in the mode prescribed by that instrument, is a project to dissolve the government into its original elements, and cast loose the bands of society.

It is delicately observed, by the Aurora, that this paper is not fit for a representative democracy. But what sort of a respect must they have for the principles of our government, who, in a moment of fretfulness—or let it be dignified by the name of anger—would melt down the whole into chaos, to remedy fictitious grievances—grievances, which, if they did exist, our Institutions are better calculated to remedy than any Convention called under the impulse of passion. The evils complained of generally belong to the course of trade: whatever is within the power of a Convention to remedy in them, is equally within the power of Congress.

We have not dwelt upon this subject because we have the least apprehension of its ever being seriously proposed, but because an attempt is made to connect this fitful expedient with attachment to free government. It is our opinion that such attachment is better shewn by a regulated respect for the form of government by which the principles of a Representative Democracy are established and secured; and by a pursuit of constitutional means for examining grievances complained of, and redressing them wherever they exist.