Alexandria daily gazette, commercial & political. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1808-1812, 1812-08-27

ING barriers of defence, enter the cell OF the
disarmed and unresisting captives; * scene
ensues of indiscribable horror. The cries
sc down down, with them,a followed by the
feroeioas yells of savage triumph, are heard
at distance, across the darkness and silence
of night, mingled with the groans of misery,
and the EXPLANATIONS of despair. Neither the
yeneration due to gray hairs, unsulhed by re-
proach, nor admiration for valor, nor graft
tude for patriotic services, much less the
claims Of youth, genius and learning, afforded
arv protection from indiscriminate fury.
Those who escaped In the darkness and
confusion of the night, owe their preservation
to chance, their own ingenuity, or that Of their
friends, who by degrees, though unarmed
themselves, press through the promiscuous
croud of rufiians and appalled, spectators.--
One of these witnessed the last moments OF
that patriot & hero, the good, the amiabe, the
gallant general James Linghan Covered
with bruises and wounds, and In the agonles
of death, he Just raised his aged head, and
asked of these monsters, permission to due
in peace when one of them with uplifted
club replied, " You damned old scouadIei'
art YOU dead vet 20 and struck the venerable
hero lifeless to the earth. At sight OF TINS
byestander tainted, and fell senseless in the
arms of those around him. :,
Over these scenes ofhorror, we would VIII.
linely spread a mantle, thicker than that OF
the awful night which Witnessed them; uut
that they disclose truth necessary TO DC
known, though humiliating indeed to every
American heart, that man, whatever we may
have hitherto boasted in the tervor CT national
nartialitv. is the same in the NEW, as IN the
OLD WORLD Unrestrained by Religion
and by Law, and impelled by sangulnary pas
siors, be is, every where, Monster, as fero-
cious and bloodthirsty as the Hyena or the
Tyger--Wherefore
Resoived that in the opinion Of This meeting,
the late riots in Baltimore, with all the clrcum-
stances accompanying and following them are
national calamity, involving IN danger, our
Property and Liberty, and Lives, and tending
to impair our hitherto confidence in our Laws,
Institutions and Manners.
Re8oFved, that every Press has right, at
all times, whether of War, or Peace, to cam
vass the wisdom, justice, or policy of Public
Measures and the character, conduct and mo-
tiyes of PUBLIC MEN, subject to no other
restraint than that OF constitutional laws: or
that the late destruction OF Free Press, by
the Mob of Baltimore, is cQualled in violence
and atrocity, only by the cruel murder of the
German Printer, Palm, by the despot of France
for the Ircc a>-i~.>;,,,, -of nniDion, and ought
to meet with equal deteStatlon IrUm e,ery
friend of freedom.
Rescued, that every man has all U1ldou6ted
Right to defend by .forcs, against all illegal Vi
olence imminently threatening the security of
either, his Dwelling and his Life: that he is
entitled to ASK, and morally speaking, to
DEMAND, and to USE the aid Of his fellow
citizens and of whatever ARMS, he or they
can procure, for the preservation of either
until the Public Authority to whom the Laws
has more particularly conhded the protection
of every citizen, shall render, such private
exertion, no longer necessary.
RESOLVED, that no Editor Of newspaper
can honora6ly Justly or legally abandon that
Press, which he has bound himself, by express
contract with his subscribers, and an implied
engagement to his country, yet more solemn,
to maintain and defend that every violence
offered to the person, property, or dwelling OF
any such editor, for the purpose OF overawIng
or destroying his press, Is an outrage, not only
on his rights, and those of his subscribers,
but on the vital principles of representative
government: and that all those, who either
publicly approve, or in any manner, openly
countenance, such violations of private right,
lend the authority of their opinions, to the cor
ruption of the best sentiments of mankind, 5.
to the subversion of the soundest maxims OF
our happy constitution.
ResolOed, that for any public authority, CT
VII or military, to negotiate or parley with
lawless mob, is at once to acknowledge its in
competency or unwilingness to dispense them
by force that to treat with such mob for the
imprisonment of men, who had committed no
offence against the laws, was an act, if design
ed TO confound those citizens with public cr-
minals, of insolencc, injustice and tyranny if
intended to lull them into fatal security and to
disarm them of the means of defence, them of