Mr. Pierce's Apology. At length we have an apology for allowing the laws of the United States to be trampled under foot in Kansas by an armed horde from Missouri. A democratic convention, held at Syracuse in the last week of August, referring to this proceeding, declared that " all the power of the federal and territorial govern ments should be exerted to redress these out rages and vindicate the rights of the people.'' Mr. Pierce has taken six weeks to digest this reprimand given by an assembly of hisfricuds, and has at length answered, through the columns of the Washington Union, in its sheet of last Saturday, Mr. Gushing, it is supposed, holding the pen. The apology takes the form of a re ply to the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, but in reality is an attempt to break the force of the rebuke administered by the Syracuse Con vention. The defence of Mr. Pierce is this. First, that the settlers of Kansas provoked the Mis- Aourians to commit these outrages. Secondly, that the President had no power to do any thing in the matter. We will consider each branch of the defence in its turn. Mr. Pierce's first position is thus stnted : " Ife [the President] saw, as every impartial man must have seen, that as soon as the Kansas bill became a law, the purpose was avowed by abolitionists to defeat its great principle bv securing the nasty immiirration into the territory, through the influence of capital, of an anti slavery population, The Kansas law was ha- ed upon the principle of allowing the bona fide settlers—those who came of their own accord to nnii iiumm liui to pursue their avocations as permanent inhabitants, and with no preconceived purpose to affect the political complexion of the territory—to allow such inhabitants to adopt or reject slavery, as they raipht decide. The spirit and object of the law were liable to be perverted and defeated in two ways—the one by the mode of hurrying in anti->laverv settlers, as charged upon the abolitionists ; the other by the mode of attending the elections, and controlling the ballot box by force, as charged upon the Missourians.— The former mode was as much calculated to excite and exasperate the South as the latter the North/' Again, speaking of those who do not look at both sides of the question, Mr. Pierce's apol ogist proceeds : " Clov. Ueeder fell into the same error when lie returned to Pennsylvania, shortly after the elections in Kansas— In his speech to his neighbors in Kaston. he denounced with bitterness tire violence and force of tbe Misaouriaus, but he wholly overlooked the the conduct ef the Massa chusetts abolitionists. on which the Missourians based their pica of justification. In the late democratic conven tion at Syracuse the same error was committed—the out rages charged upon the Missourians were strongly censur ed, but the interferences of the abolitionists which had provoked those outrages were entirely passed over."' Mr. P ieree's apologist strangely overlooks the true history of the settlement of Kansas. There was a provocation earlier than the one he mentions ; earlier than the occupation of the territory by the free emigrants from the northern states. The first provocation was given by the friends of slavery when they passed the Nebraska bill against the remon strances of the people of the northern states, and took away from them a territory which had been yielded to freedom by a solemn com pact, never, as the parties who made it under stood, to he violated in all time. All allusion to this commencement of the quarrel, the great original wrong, for such the North viewed it, and views it still, is cunningly omitted by this pretender to impartiality, who looks at both sides with such an affectation of candor. This is not the only fraud in the apology which we are analyzing. It calls the entrance of northern settlers into the territory, by a concert of action among themselves, a provo cation. Provocation to what ? Certainly not to violence. It was a perfectly peaceful, legal rightful proceeding. Any one who pleas ed had a right to become a resident of Kansas ; he had a right to persuade others to go with him ; he had a right to become a member of an association for providing the means of send ing out a company of his neighbors to settle the country. This was what they did; they retaliated by means which the law permitted, and which took away no man's right. The Nebraska hill was a challenge to the friends of slavery and the friends of freedom to do their best, in a peaceful and legitimate way.— The friends of freedom accepted it, and made an attempt to colonize the country—a feeble one, we allow—so feeble indeed, as to have disappointed those who cherished the expecta tion that it would lead to great results. The friends of slavery had the same course before them, and they might have retaliated in the same manner. To call the residence of a few quiet persons sent out by an emigration society a provocation to armed violence, as the Union does, is a shameless, senseless abuse of terms. So stands the matter ; it was the South that gave the provocation,and it has no right to make its own provocation a pretext for its own acts of violence. But admitting that the Missou rians have, by lawless force, obstructed the real residents of Kansas in the exercise of their legal rights, the T r nion denies that Mr. I'icree could interfere. It says : " The law organizing the territory of Kansas define* the powers anil duties of the President, and we have ex amined it in vain for the authority under which he could have guarded the ballot-box agaiu-t fraud or violence— That tie should have been apprised in advance of any •uch occurrences is in itself a preposterous assumption, hut, even if that had been possible, we have been wholly at fault in our efforts to locate the executive power to Interfere in such a case. # " The President shrinks from no scrntiny. however rigid, to which his policy as to Kansas can be subjected. To heap abuse upon him upon the assumption either that he has been the partisan of the pro-slavery or the anti slavery party is not to scrutinise his conduct, and against the effects of all such manifestations of passion or mean ness he will be effectually shielded by a just public senti ment. His whole duty, under the Kansas law, required the President to take the steps therein designated to or ganize the territory upon the principle of tearing Hie peo ple perfectly free to form and regulate their otrn domestic institutions in their otrn tray, subject only to the constitu tion of the United States." If the President has looked in vain to find any authority to interfere in securing to the residents of Kansas the right of suffrage, which the organic law of the territory pro fosses to secure to them, he has looked very negligently. It is time we had a President better acquainted with the laws of his coun try. The Union admits that it was the inten tion of the law that the people should frame their owu domestic institutions, aud that it was the duty of the President to see that they were " left perfectly free" to do it. The Pres ideut is commander-in-chief of the army ; he may order detachineuts of the United States troops to whatever part of the Union or its territories he pleases. The laws empower him to employ military force to suppress insurrec tions and put down obstructions to the execu tion of the laws. But, says the Union, the President could not have been apprised of these outrages be forehand. We affirm that the President was apprised of them beforehand. Several months before the principal outrages were committed, they began with au invasion from Missouri by the creatures of Atchison, who possessed themselves of the polls and elected a delegate to Congress. There was every reason to be lieve that the same foidgamc would be played ©ver again. Atchison's manoeuvres were not •ecrct, nor was his army recruited silently. If the President did not know what was going on, he must have shut twth his eyes and his e.ir If lie and his agents had used but one tenth part of the vigilance which has been used to prevent soldiers from being sent from this country to Halifax for enlistment in the British army, the outrages which the Union seeks to extenuate would never have been commit ted.—Evening Post. From Salt Lake City—Brigham Young Getting Excited. The Salt Lake Netcs has late advices from Mormoiidom. Brighara Young's ninety-six wives seem to have no power over his spirit in subduing its fierceness. He is full of wrath against the followers of Belial, the United States soldiers, who, last winter, seduced the Mormon girls to taking sleigh rides and other little peculiarities not considered moral and becoming in that chaste community. Hear him : I say again that the constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of the dif ferent States, as a general thing, are just as good as we want, provided they were honored. But we find judges who do not honor the laws, yes, officers of the law dishonor the law. Leg islators and law makers arc frequently the first violators of the laws they make. " When the wicked rale the people mourn," and when the corruption of a people bears down the scale in favor of wickedness, that people is nigh unto destruction. We have the proof on hand, that instead of the laws being made honorable they have been trampled under the feet of law yers, jnages, slicrilff, governors, legislators, and nearly all the officers of government ; Si'.ch jiersons are the most guilty of breaking the laws. To diverge a little, in regard to those who have persecuted this people and driven them to tlie mountains, I intend to meet them on their own grounds. I was asked this morn ing how we could obtain redress for our wrongs; I will tell you how it could be done ; we could take the same law they have taken, viz : mob ocraey, and if any miserable scoundrels come here, eut their throats. (All the people said, Amen.) This would be meting out that treatment to wicked men which they had meas ured to innocent persons. We Mould meet them on their own ground, when they will not honor the law, but will kill the prophets and destroy the innocent. They could drive the innocent from their homes, take their horses and farms, cattle and goods, and destroy men, women aud children, walking over the laws of the United States, trampling them under their feet, and not honoring a single law. Suppose I should follow the example they have shown us and say, " Latter Day Saints do ye likewise and bid defiance to the whole class of such men !" Some who are timid might say, "O ! our property will be destroyed, and we shall be killed." If any man here is a coward, there are fine mountain retreats for those who feel their hearts beating at every little line aud cry of the wicked, as tho' they would break their ribs. After this year we shall very likely again have fruitful seasons. Again, he says : Up to this time we have carried the world j on our backs. Joseph did it iu his day, be sides carrying this whole people, and now all this is upon my hack, with my family to pro vide for at the same time, and we will carry it ' all and bear off the Kingdom of God. And i you may pile on State after State, kingdom j after kingdom, and all hell on top, and we will roll on the kingdom of our God, gather out j the seed of Abraham, build the cities and tern- i pies of Zion, and establish the kingdom of j God to bear rale over all the earth, and let the i oppressed of all nations go free. I have never yet talked so rough in these mountains as I did in the United States when they killed Joseph. I there said, boldly and aloud, "If ever a man should lay his hands on me and say (on account of my religion,)you are my pris oner, the Lord Almighty helping me, I would send that man to hell across lots " I feel so now. Let robbers keep their hands off from me, or I will send them where they belong.— I am always prepared for such an emergency. Ex-Senator Clemens on Forney and the Washington Union. Colonel Clemens has been defeated recently as a Know-Nothing candidate for the lee;isla ture of Alabama. The Union had the audac ity to he as glad of it as the Montgomery Advertiser, and said so. Whereupon the ex senator larrups his old crony of the Jamison letter-memory, after the following fashion : " Independence of thought or action is some thing which the editor of the Union never understood, any more than he understood mo ralitv and honor when he sought through an agent, to induce a drunken man to utter the foulest calumnies upon the reputation of a woman. But he does understand the way to executive favor, and he knows well enough, that if I had wanted office, I had only to stoop to the meanness, which is part of his nature, to obtain it. I bad only to swear that Wash ington never approached Pierce in administra tive ability ; that Jackson had never been half so "open, frank and manly," in his dealings with his countrymen ; that squatter sovereignty was a direct visitation from Heaven ; that the burning of Greytown was an achievement worthy of Napoleon ; that the shameless hack ing out from all the administration's Cuban blustering was the perfection of foresight and eourage ; that its double-dealing with Soule and Quitman was candor and honor ; that the appointment of Dix and Cochrane was the es sence of southern rights, and the wisdom of the selection of Belmont was vindicated by the fact that old clothes had fallen full twenty per cent. These, and a few like things, would, doubtless, have won for mo the sunniest smiles of the Executive, and saved me from the charge of having "repudiated principles," "severed ties" and "forsaken associations words which it is easy to use but somewhat difficult to prove. I have repudiated no principles. Mv opinion of foreigners was openly avowed before the American party had an existence. I denounc ed squatter sovereignty in the Senate, and have never been able to discover any beauty in it since the President took it to his bosom. I opposed extravagant expenditures of the public money, and my faith in the correctness of the principle has not been shaken by the fact that the present administration has run them up to more than eighty millions of dol lars. As to "severing ties," I know of none that bound me to pronounce that evil was good, and, as I never ha cessitieg, if not in the positive piratical i acter lie and his associates have already lished in their former government of '^ om> . At all eveuts, they prefer, they say, not to* ject their money to the mercy of such bau * > • of INVITATION ACCEPTED. —Senator Georgia, has accepted the invitation - Boston Committee on Slavery Lecture 8 . u '' ture in that city. He will deliver his am ■ on the 24th of January, and lias sflectf his theme, "The Consistency of very with the Constitution of the I , t 0 f and Republican Institutions, and the <' * the American Revolution upon the - race."