larity of this policy in the southern states. A late Charleston paper contains a memorial to the legislature of South-Carolina in favor of the survey of a route for a canal from Charleston to the interior of the state; and a petition has been presented to the legislature of Georgia, for the incorporation of a manufacturing company. We trust that these experiments will be successful, and have a tendency to destroy at least some portion of the prejudice now existing against the American System.

With these views, and solemnly devoted to the promotion of such measures as they indicate to be the best and indeed the only measures to secure private happiness and public prosperity, we have abundant reason to be satisfied with the position we have taken as servants of the public in the capacity of editors. It gives us no alarm to see the strongest partizan journals on either side disclaiming our fellowship. When we are quoted by one as an "administration" and by another as an "opposition" print, we feel that these same journals pay rather an involuntary homage to our independence and impartiality, earned by the performance of our duty to truth and justice.

The place we have chosen to occupy between, or rather above, the lines which mark the ground of most of our cotemporaries, is not, however, a field where the most profitable harvest, in a pecuniary sense, is to be gathered. Being counted neither with the administration nor the opposition, we are considered as a sort of Ishmaelite, with our hand against every man, for almost every man is identified with one or the other of these great parties, — and, as a matter of course, with every man's hand against us. We solicit no favors from men in office, and we get none. We ask no office, nor expect any. Consequently, whichever party in the present contest. shall be triumphant, we neither make nor lose, individually, by the result; and as to the general interest, no party can long sustain itself in power that does not pursue the policy we have endeavored to illustrate as the best. Such is or will be the voice of the American people; and the voice of the people is, as it should be, omnipotent, exalting and abasing whomsoever it will.

We have learned to despise the sneers of those who have been foiled in their attempts to win us for Jackson, and to disregard the averted look of those who suspect that we are not full-blooded, heart-and-hand men for Adams. Sneering and cutting are not the most persuasive arguments to gain adherents to any cause. To all those who use them towards us in the present state of our politics, we are willing to stand in the position and in the character of the Jackdaw on the steeple; who

Fond of that speculative height,
Thither pursues his airy flight,
And there securely sees
The bustle and the raree-show
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees that this great round-about,
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,

Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,

And says what says he?-CAW!

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men ;

And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a HEAD between 'em.

Washington, Dec. 16, 1827.

In compliance with the warm and honest dictates of the heart, as well as with the customary forms of society, we tender to our subscribers, our friends and fellow-citizens, the

usual compliments of the season, and our unaffected wishes for a continuance of their health, happiness, and prosperity.

It has become the fashion of the times to use the annual return of this day as an occasion for anticipation and reflection. It may be compared to an eminence on the great pathway of life, whence one may look backward upon the ground he has traveled over, and forward to the termination of his journey, where he may reflect on the difficulties he has met, the tribulations he has suffered, the impediments he has surmounted, and, from what he has learned in the school of experience, gather wisdom to guide and resolution to encourage him in his attempts to tread the uncertainties of the landscape before him.

With no desire to inflict upon our readers an undeserved penance, or to surfeit their spirits, on a day so joyous, with the overflowings of a sickly sentimentality, we yet solicit their indulgence for a few moments, while we advert to one or two topics, in regard to which we have taken a bolder stand than most of our cotemporaries, and assumed a position on which few, if any of them, have deemed it profitable or politic to enter. These topics form the prominent features in the character of this paper; they are points on which we place some claims to public favor; although we are well aware, that, with some, they are regarded with indifference, and with others, as causes of decided disapprobation.

In the first place, the Courier, if we are capable of judging of the nature and effect of what we write and what we select for publication, is entitled to the character of a neutral, independent paper, in reference to the two great belligerent political parties which now divide the nation between them, and under the banners of one or the other of which nearly every man in the nation is enlisted. Such a character few other papers have sustained, — such a character, probably, few other editors would deem it an honor to acquire. We boast no exemption from the common temperament of the age; we have strong feelings of political partiality, and dislike; but we have learned to subdue them. Our neutrality in the present contest, we hesitate not to avow it, is the effect of dislike

to certain prominent men in both parties; and our independence (by which we mean an entire freedom from all the obligations and restraints imposed by the organizations of parties on their respective members) grows out of the circumstance that we have never sought nor received that kind of support that comes from men in power and office. We have never eaten of the bread that is distributed by the grand almoner of state bounty, nor drank of the cup that is filled from the fount flowing out of the public treasury. Consequently, to the disinterested disposers and the impartial distributors of official patronage we "owe no subscription." Having received nothing from the present administration that can place it in the attitude of a creditor, nor asking any thing of that which may succeed it which can degrade us to the humiliating position of a debtor, there is no cause for shutting our eyes to the absurdities and follies of either party; there is no reason why we should "soothe the dull cold ear" of the dead in power, with the language of flattery, nor stir up the already too hot blood of those who seek it, with the tones of obsequiousness. In short, we are independent, because we have no patrons. For all that we get, we give an equivalent, which places us on a level with the richest and most powerful contributor to our limited income, and no one has a right to reproach us with an abuse of his patronage. PATRON! the word, with all its derivatives and compounds, is a disgrace to the vocabulary of a democratic people. Wherever you see that inflated lordly thing called Patron, you may see also that abject piece of vileness, a slave, at his feet.

But enough of politics, and the relations in which we stand with the politician. There is another subject, in regard to which we differ from most of our cotemporaries; and on this point it is infinitely more important to us that we should be fairly understood; for, in the opinion which the people of this city may form of our views and motives, and with the spirit in which they meet those views and motives, we are conscious that our interest is deeply and seriously involved. Not that we apprehend the loss of all our subscribers, if we should chance to express an opinion that might not correspond in all

its bearings with the opinion of every reader; nor that we should be alarmed if half a score should withdraw their names and intercourse, in consequence of our entertaining a sentiment differing from theirs on a subject whereon wiser and better men have differed before us; such expressions of temper can be met, as they have been, with a feeling nearly allied to indifference, and their effects on our income can be repaired, as they have been, by the acquisition of other names to the subscription list of equal responsibility. That which displeases one, may be highly gratifying to another. That all men cannot think alike, is a truism almost too stale to be repeated; but whilst hardly any two of the readers of a newspaper hold the same opinions in regard to what they read, the editor is placed in a rather uncomfortable situation, if he is compelled to agree with them all. It would seem to be a little unreasonable to demand that the operations of his mind should correspond exactly with the operations of a thousand other minds, cast in a thousand different moulds, and with no uniform character, except that they are uniformly diverse and variable.

The American Manufacturing System is the subject to which we would now draw the attention of the reader. Of this system we profess to be the advocates, and we are not ashamed of the avowal. We strongly wish that the motives to the course we have pursued and probably shall continue to pursue, should be clearly understood; and it is to that end, chiefly, that we have craved indulgence to what many may think an impertinent display of egotism, and a tiresome detail of individual opinions, mistaken notions, and unwarrantable deductions.

To disinterestedness, in the literal sense of the word, we make no pretences. The senior editor of the Courier has lived in Boston near thirty years, a term of time which commenced before the expiration of minority, and long enough to assimilate and identify his interest in all that concerns the prosperity of the town with the interest of his fellow-citizens. If the general good can be of moment to an individual citizen, it is of moment to him; inasmuch, as, from the nature of the busi