d to understand the
circumstances of that commerce better than a man who is a stranger to
it; and as they have shown no approbation of the war-whoop measures of
the Federal senators, it becomes presumptive evidence they disapprove
them. This is a new mortification for those war-whoop politicians; for
the case is, that finding themselves losing ground and withering away in
the Atlantic States, they laid hold of the affair of New Orleans in the
vain hope of rooting and reinforcing themselves in the western States;
and they did this without perceiving that it was one of those ill judged
hypocritical expedients in politics, that whether it succeeded or failed
the event would be the same. Had their motion [that of Ross and Morris]
succeeded, it would have endangered the commerce of the Atlantic States
and ruined their reputation there; and on the other hand the attempt
to make a tool of the western people was so badly concealed as to
extinguish all credit with them.

But hypocrisy is a vice of sanguine constitution. It flatters and
promises itself every thing; and it has yet to learn, with respect to
moral and political reputation, it is less dangerous to offend than to
deceive.

To the measures of administration, supported by the firmness and
integrity of the majority in Congress, the United States owe, as far as
human means are concerned, the preservation of peace, and of national
honour. The confidence which the western people reposed in the
government and their representatives is rewarded with success. They are
reinstated in their rights with the least possible loss of time; and
their harmony with the people of New Orleans, so necessary to the
prosperity of the United States, which would have been broken, and the
seeds of discord sown in its place, had hostilities been preferred to
accommodation, remains unimpaired. Have the Federal ministers of the
church meditated on these matters? and laying aside, as they ought to
do, their electioneering and vindictive prayers and sermons, returned
thanks that peace is preserved, and commerce, without the stain of
blood?

In the pleasing contemplation of this state of things the mind, by
comparison, carries itself back to those days of uproar and extravagance
that marked the career of the former administration, and decides, by
the unstudied impulse of its own feelings, that something must then have
been wrong. Why was it, that America, formed for happiness, and remote
by situati