Before
urging his "restraints," the President ought to have inquired a
little into the history of such restraints; and he would then have
saved himself from the absurdity of patronizing remedies which an
actual trial had proved ludicrously inapt and inefficacious.
With regard to the second topic of the Message,--our foreign
relations,--it may be said that the positions assumed are frank,
manly, and explicit; unless we have reason to suspect, in the
slightly belligerent attitude towards Spain, a return, on the part
of the President, to one of his old and unlawful loves,--the
acquisition of Cuba. In that case, we should deplore his language,
and be inclined to doubt also the sincerity of his just
denunciations of Walker's infamous schemes of piracy and brigandage.
Until events, however, have developed the signs of a sinister policy
of this sort, we must bestow an earnest plaudit upon his decided
rebuke of the filibusters, coupling that praise with a wish that the
"vigilance" of his subordinates may hereafter prove of a more
wide-awake and energetic kind than has yet been manifested.
But for the terms in which the President has disposed of his third
topic,--the Kansas difficulty,--we can scarcely characterize their
disingenuousness and meanings. We have already spoken of the object
of this part of the document as atrocious,--and we repeat the word,
as the most befitting that could be used.
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