A Little One-Sided

A LITTLE ONE-SIDED

The Pittsburgh Gazette says:

Oh no! old fashioned Whig principles are nothing; the Tariff is nothing; improvements of western rivers and harbors nothing: there is only one national principle, slavery; there is only one great question at issue which calls for the solemn consideration and decision of the American people, the duty of catching runaway negroes! Every thing else must bend to this, and it must be done, too, in the "bonds of love and duty." What signifies it that the manufacturing interests of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania are prostrate? What signifies it that the fires of our furnaces have nearly all gone out, and that the workmen are scattered abroad to seek a livelihood as best they may? What matters it that hundreds of lives and millions of property are lost on our western rivers and lakes for want of improvement? What matters any thing that the people may justly have to complain of? The only principle is the support of slavery; the only measure worthy of consideration the endorsement of the finality of the Fugitive Slave Act in the "bonds of love and duty."

To this the New York Express replies:

There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States, we may reply, which contracts for and guarantees protection to furnace, or makes rivers and harbors by the Federal Government, but there is an article of the Constitution which expressly, and in the strongest terms, guarantees the delivery up, and on claim only, of the fugitive slave. And hence, when the Constitution is violently assailed upon that point, naturally enough more attention is attracted to the assault than to assaults upon interests not thus expressly protected there.

Comment. We do not intend to view this matter in a party light, nor do we feel that we are doing so, when we ask, how is it possible that the Gazette can expect any party in the South to protect Pennsylvania furnaces, to clean out Pennsylvania rivers, to rectify any of the evils in short, of which it complains? But a few months ago a citizen of a slaveholding State, in pursuit of his property, guaranteed to him by the Constitution, was murdered in Pennsylvania. The murderer is at large-the blood of an unoffending man cries in vain for justice-the example is held up by a large portion of the Pennsylvania press as one worthy of imitation-and a similar fate is openly threatened to all those who engage in a similar enterprise. Can it be expected, then, that the South should be particularly anxious to protect the interests of those who so willfully disregard hers. Who hesitate not to inculcate murder when an offending Southern man merely asks for his own, and attempts to reclaim it by process of law?

There is no city in the Union, which depends more directly and absolutely upon the South than Pittsburgh herself. Almost her entire trade lies with the lower Mississippi, with Tennessee, with Arkansas, with Louisiana and with Mississippi. If the slave population were liberated to morrow, Pittsburgh would be a ruined city. She does not hesitate to live and to thrive upon the labor of the slave-she, in fact, is as much dependent upon it as New Orleans or Mobile or Charleston. Extinguish that, and you put out the fire of every furnace in and around Pittsburgh. Yet the city of Pittsburgh supports a paper which is continually assailing these very Southern people by whose means Pittsburgh lives, by whose means she has attained her present pitch of greatness, by whose means she hopes, in time, to rival the prosperity of the great Atlantic cities-yet the representatives of the Southern people, not at all interested in the iron and coal of Pennsylvania, are expected to forget all this, and to be stow the boon of protection upon those who are daily calling them tyrants, felons, and manstealers! We admire a forgiving disposition, yet we think this is asking a little too much.

But the Pittsburgh Gazette is not singular in its expressions of irritation at the South, for not rewarding the people of Pennsylvania for the murder of Gorsuch. The Hon. Joshua R. Giddings thinks it perfectly right, that southern men should reward him for his apotheosis of the runaway lately killed in Pennsylvania, while engaged in resisting the law of the land, by voting for a bill to clear out the harbor of Cleveland.

The conduct of southern members, in this particular, meets with our sincere approbation. The Whig party is understood to be in favor of revising the tariff of 1846. Immediately after the compromise act, all of them, with one exception, voted on the preliminary steps in the affirmative. In the meantime Governor Johnston vetoed a bill to enforce the Constitutional provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves. The question of revising the tariff came up again, and it received  but two approving votes from the south. We hope the south will always stand firm, whatever individual opinions may be, in this position. It is the Thermoplyæ of the constitution.