Daily National Intelligencer

WASHINGTON CITY.

FRIDAY, MAY 21.

THE INTEGRITY OF THE UNION

Has been, our readers are well apprised, covertly assailed, for several years, by a few men in and about the town of Boston, with a zeal malignity and perseverance, which is really surprising, when we perceive how entirely abortive their efforts have so far proved, to drag the federal party into the snare they have laid, to entrap them to their ruin. For all that we have been able to see, the main body of the federalists, those who form the mass of every popular body--the honest men, are guiltless of the designs which have been frequently imputed to them by identifying them with a few vicious men, who affect to be their leaders, and indeed have been too much in the habit of dictating to them the course the party ought to pursue.

Since the termination of the elections in favor of the opposition in a few of the Eastern states, the faction assumes a bolder tone, and dares to menace the government of the Union with the vengeance of what they call the opulent, populous and intelligent state of Massachusetts. The speech delivered by Josiah Quincy, the representative from Boston, during the last session of Congress, excited the indignation of all unbiased men, and its import and terms were disclaimed without exception by every gentleman even of the federal party whom we have heard converse upon the subject. On a recent occasion, the same person has delivered an oration before a sort of factious club calling itself the Washington Benevolent Society, which, taken in connection with certain contemporaneous publications in the Boston prints, has a direct and obvious tendency to promote a dissolution of the Union. True it is, these orators and printers do not recommend an open abruption from the Union; but they tell you Massachusetts has the right, and that she has the power too, to change her relation to the other states as fixed by the constitution--that she is oppressed, they falsely say, and being oppressed, and having the right and the power, must do herself justice, 'amicably if she can, forcibly if she must.' We know that these hints about a dissolution of the Union are wrapped up in cobweb arguments and velvet phrases--that the faction say they only apprehend, and therefore wish to guard against danger to the Union. Who but they ever spoke about danger to the Union? Who but they ever menaced it? The faction say, forsooth they only contemplate such a thing as possible.

Now we say,

"The wish is father to the thought:"

And firmly do we believe, that the power alone is wanting to carry into effect their nefarious projects. When detected and dragged into open day, the factionists do indeed disclaim hostility to the Union, and profess themselves attached to the constitution. But how happened it, we ask, if they have afforded no indications of hostility to the Union, that the British government sent John Henry on a secret mission amongst them, to foment a separation of the states? How happened it he made Boston his head-quarters?

But will these people dare attempt the infernal plans they hint at? No; they will not, dare not. The punishment due to traitors would overtake them with the velocity of lightning from the indignant feeling of an incensed people. The federalists of Massachusetts are deceived, hood-winked, led astray. Let the bandage be loosened from their eyes, and they will prostrate in the dust the faction which now disgraces them and holds itself up to public detestation.

To return to Mr. Quincy's oration. We should have presented it to our readers entire, and had actually laid it aside for the purpose, but that it is, like most modern speeches are, much too long. We are pleased to see it republished in the federal papers, for in poison there is physic. It will open the eyes of some men to the fallibility of the oracle they have heretofore pursued, and teach them the real designs of that faction which profanes the name of Washington, by claiming him as its patron. Let every genuine federalist read this speech and Parson Parish's Fast Sermon, and if he be not forever weaned of Washington Societies and Essex Federalism, we pronounce his political disease incurable, unless by the aid of a strait jacket and water gruel.