The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 103, 4 May 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1867.

The intelligence which has reached us during the last few weeks from America justifies us in believing that the political atmosphere in that country is still most troublous and threatening. The Republicans appear resolved to prevent the restoration, of peace and fraternity in the United States. A motion has been carried in Congress with a view to the impeachment of the President, and if there be not found in the Senate enough moderation to check these revolutionary firebrands, years will pass away before the United States recover that solidity and compactness of chai'acter and population to which they owe their unparallelled

progress,

President Johnston has done nothing upon which an impeachment can be sustained. He has not exceeded the legal bounds of his authority in any instance, for the veto power he has used is vested in his office by the Constitution. The only object of an impeachment can be to deprive him of his office by suspending him from his functions pendente lite. We can hardly bring ourselves to imagine it possible that the people of the United States will ever sanction so violent a proceeding against the chief of their Executive, against whom no malversation is even insinuated, and whose only offence is, that he thinks one mode of reconstructing the Union the best, while the Republicans prefer another, or rather that he is for restoring the Union, while they are passionately bent upon perpetuating disuuion. The President considers that the victors in the late unfortunate civil war should be clement and generous ; and that having fought in defence of the Union and conquered, their object now should be to reinstate the seceders in their former position in the Republic, under certain guarantees and conditions favorable to the anti-slavery policy of the Northern States. The Republicans, on the other hand, are for pursuing a vindictive course towards the South, and for degrading the Southern States into territories without a vote or a

voice in Congress.

It is easy to see where this policy, if be carried out, will end. The Republicans, if they will only open their eyes for one moment in a lucid interval, might see in in our own fatherland an example full of warning against the effects of such a policy. Do the Northern States desire to have their Ireland — the persecuted and oppressed, a thorn in the side of, and a source of weakness to the persecutor and oppressor ? What would the England of this day give to be clear of the embarrassment caused by the evil policy of other days towards Ireland ? The American Republicans would do well to study this important historical lesson.

The gulf between the Republicans and President Johnson seems daily gi-owing wider, and each successive mail brings us intelligence of events that forebode great calamities to the mighty Republic. Undaunted by the threat of impeachment, the President continues to exercise his power of veto, though he knows that he cannot by that means prevent aDy measure, approved by the majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, from becoming law, and every veto adds fresh *uel to the animosity of his adversaries.

The Republicans seem bent on destroying the Constitution. Their rebellious hands are lifted alike against the President, the Supreme Court, and the constitutional rights of the several States of the Union. They have passed acts curtailing the President's vested rights and privileges, and the established right of each State to regulate its own elective franchise, which the Supreme Court has declared to be illegal ; and as the Supreme Court, contrary, as it seems, to our New Zealand Constitution, is above their control, aud its decisions cannot be set aside like the President's veto, they uublushingly avow their determination to make it subservient to their will. In the present temper of the Republican majority in Congress, the impeachment of the President means his suspension from office, and the investituie of a strong partisan with temporary presidential powers. This done, the Supreme Court would speedily become the subservient tool of the majority in Congress : all that is required thus to pervert and degrade the highest court of justice in the Republic being the increase of its number from nine to eleven, and the infusion of two staunch adherents of the party, whose votes would reverse the present order aud give them a majority in the Supreme Court. By his oath of office, the President is bound to defend the Constitution, and, by the Constitution, the Supreme Court, is vested with the power of sitting in judgment upon the acts of Congress, and declaring whether or not they are lawful and binding. It is, therefore, the duty of the President to enforce the decisions of the Supreme Court against the acts of Congress, passed, too, over his own veto. It is said- that the President is determined to do so, and to call to his aid the naval and military force of the nation in compelling the rebellious Republicans to obey the law and respect the Constitution. If this be the case, there is every probability that the next mail or so will auuounce the commencement of auother civil war, the issue of which it is riot difficult to foresee.