Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

Creeping policy.--Any nation to be respected, must make itself feared- not by foul means, but by sturdy inflexible resolution to have justice, as well as to do justice: A nation that tramples upon the rights of other nations, is both feared and hated, and it is the interest of all its neighbours to pull it down, or at least to curb its power : whereas a nation that will neither do wrong nor suffer wrong, is beheld with a fear that is mixed with veneration.

Always to be prepared for war, and in no case either to seek it, or shun it by abject means, is the way to escape both war and disgrace, and to preserve a dignified peace. An individual who has complete power of self-defence and to right himself when wronged, and is known to be of a temper neither to give an affront nor take one, is seldom insulted. And so is it with a powerful nation that is inflexibly just itself, and inflexibly determined that its own rights shall be respected. While on the other hand a nation that tamely submits to indignities, insults and injuries, from any one power, particularly invites all the other powers to treat it with the like scorn and contumely. The rulers of such a nation, while they cover themselves with shame, are sure to be bewildered in a maze of perplexities. Their zig-zag creeping policy conducts them at last to a point, whence they neither know how to go forward or retreat. Their situation then resembles that described in the following old lines which mothers and nurses used in old times to say or sing to their children.

" Queen Bessy, she crept and crept into a spout,

And she crept and she crept, but she could not creep out."