Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, By JOSEPH COE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of New Hampshire. STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY MORRILL, SILSBY, & CO. CONCORD, N. H. PREFACE. E302 ./ сь V1Z THE present is a time which must force people to serious reflection on the prospect of the country; and it therefore seems proper to recur to first principles, to go back and examine the views entertained and principles contended for by those whom the republic has ever delighted to honor. The recent triumph of the whig party has revived systems and measures which, for nearly half a century, had been repudiated by the democracy as unsafe, unsound, inimical to liberty, and destructive of the best interests of the great mass of the people. The creation of a national debt; a national bank; increased taxation, by enhancing the tariff, not for the necessary purposes of revenue, nor yet for protection, but for distribution among the states in the shape of the proceeds of the public lands; a wanton profuseness and extravagance in the expenditure of the public money, exhausting the treasury for the benefit of partisans and dependents, thus rendering it necessary to replenish it by loans and the imposition of new taxes on industry and the necessaries of life; these all are measures so wide in their influence, and so important in their consequences, that their adoption and prosecution by the party in power cannot fail to awaken the whole community to deep and solemn thought. They are that system of measures which Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson so powerfully and successfully resisted. M247156 The overthrow of our republic cannot be effected openly by means professedly adopted for such a purpose. The love of liberty glows yet too brightly in the hearts of the great mass of our citizens, to render any open and avowed attacks upon it either politic or safe. The result will be brought about by subtle measures, the tendency of which is not seen till it is too late, by professions of attachment to democracy, by a liberal use of popular catchwords and phrases, which shall tend to throw honest and confiding citizens off their guard. Enemies of liberty will assume the guise and imitate the speech of its friends. Their measures are all professedly proposed for the benefit of the people, and the hope is entertained that the people may be made to adopt them, and thus, as it were, to place the yoke on their own necks, and the chain upon their own limbs. The fate of all past republics is before us, and full of warning and instruction. If we will but listen, they tell us that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; when our industrious laborers, skilful mechanics, and enterprising traders find it, or fancy they find it, necessary to take sides with the enemies of liberty against their country for the promotion of their own personal interest. We may then rest assured that no ordinary danger is ahead. Our fathers did not wait till the tyrant had consummated his work; they stood firm, incorruptible, inflexible in their purposes, and strong in their love of liberty, and ready and willing to stake honor, fortune, and life for its possession. Without similar firmness, incorruptibility, and inflexibility of purpose, we shall fail to preserve it for ourselves, much more to transmit it as an inheritance for our children. The portion of the community on whom we must in the main rely to fight the battles of free dom, and prolong the life of the republic, are the cultivators of the soil, mechanics, the producing classes of the community. These are the bone and muscle of the country. The fate of our in stitutions is mainly in their hands; and to them the Editor makes his appeal, entreating them to be on their guard, to keep their lights burning, their sentinels posted and on the look out, ready to give warning on the approach of danger, that they may not become entangled by the arts of the enemy, or crushed by his machinery; believing, as the Editor does, that the natural tendency of the leading policy of the party now in power is ruinous to the permanency of our free institutions. He is induced to continue the publication of the True American, and to spread before his countrymen the doctrines and warnings of the great, the wise, and the good, who were distinguished for their patriotism, their private worth and public virtues, and whose best energies and whole lives were devoted to the defence of republican freedom. The documents he has collected and publishes, will serve as a sort of chart of our political coast, which may warn the navigators of the ship of state of the rocks, shoals, and quicksands they must study to avoid, and point them to the only sure channel through which they can enter the harbor, and anchor in safety. In conclusion he would say, that though the enemies of liberty are now in power, he still confides in the intelligence and patriotism of the great body of the American people, and fears not but through an overruling Providence the republic will yet be preserved. |