The Portland gazette. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1818-1824, 1822-05-07
COMMUNICATION.
PROTEUS.

DIR. SHIRLEY,
Many of your readers, who have been accu.-
toned to consider the Portland Gazette as
faithful and sound repository of those old fash
iored, federal-republican principles, whose advo-
Gates formed our republican constitutions of
Government, and gave an unequvocal evidence
Of their policy and of their attachment to the
rights of man" in the formation and adoption
OF our republican systems have, of late, been led
to doubt the firmness of your federalism.-This
doubt OF your republican orthodoxy, flor, by the
way we understand federalism and republican
ssm, in these United States, to mean the same
thing) has arisen, not in consequence of the
absence Of sound republican doctrines from the
Gazette, but from the meek and patient manner
ia which you have hitherto resisted the foul.
unmanly and Jacobin attacks of the Eastern
Argus, both upon your paper, and your federal
friends who contribute to its support When we
see the Editorial columns of the Argus FURNISHED
up 10 its highest style filed to overflow inc.
with the popular words I" Republicans, Republi-
canisos, Patriotism, Republican cause" "the ven
cradle Jefferson" (who abandoned Washington's
glorious administration, because he was an enc
my to it } When we see the Argus dressed up
IN its full suit of personal scurrllty introducing
with gTat'atous generosity, the names of feder-
ailsts by way OF dessert to the dish, which they
| usually furnish for their friend Gen. Wingate.
upon those occasions we are not surprised, that
the Editor of the Gazette smiles, in silence. at
these " snail tricks which are obviously IN
tended by the under-managers of the Argus to
deceive its readers, and to make them the dupes
Of its anti-republican projects. 1t ought not to
be expected, that the Editor of the Gazette
should take fire, whenever the Argus introduc.
es the Bradleys and the WaIingfords'' by way
of garnishment to its made dishes, evidently
cooked up to tickle the palates of the honest
and creduous, whom the Argus has hitherto de-
ceived with triumphant successful the Argus
will still persist, in its Infamous practice of con-
Meeting the names of distinguished Federalists
with that of Gen. Wingate, as one of its most
hopeful modes of cheating the people Of Maine
into belief that those gentlemen take any in
terest IN the political scramble between the two
selistyied republican parties, it cannot be rea-
sonably expected, that the Editor of the Gazette
will take up the gauntlet. Let those Federal
Gentlemen, who are thus wantonly beied and
vilifed, by the Argus, notice its SANDERS and
falsehoods, if they can bring themselves to no.
tee such unprovoked and contemplate scurili-
ty. But very different case is presented,
when the Argus asserts, and reiterates its de-
nunciations that the Gazette is in political ALI
ance with the Statesman. However true and
unquestionable it may be, that all honorable
Federasts hold, in Inerited scorn and contempt.
the political tergyersa;ons and shuflings of such
characters as King, Ware, Holmes and Compa-
ny I; and notwithstanding it is undenably true,
that no honorable Federalist, who regards his