Litchfield enquirer., 1862-05-29
Clarke.

CHarKes
 Shall we make any further allusion to T. M, Clarke, the notorious editor of the Winsted Her. ald7 Shall we give other chapters Illustrative of his life, his character, his history and his habits Shall we stir up the reeking pool which blackens and deforms ah existence akin only to the beasts that perish or the dends that fry Is not his life his character, his history sufficient ly notorious, where he is known, to debar the necessity of giving him further notice in these columns We think it is.
 We have mass of correspondence before us, furnished from various sources, which reveals to us this mans life from the time that he drove his fathers COWS to pasture years ago to the time when he went over to the secessionists in his paper two months since. We could follow him up, through these letters, from his boyhood, when he was as despised among his companions then as he is among his neighbors now; we could give an inkllng of his youth, when he hung about Winsted grogeriss among the lowest of the low, when he visited low dances and was the leading spirit in thousand dirty tricks which will never be forgotten by those who knew him then, when he lay drunk in the gutter day after day and night after night; who were his boon companions, (the most promising, and by far the most honest of them, now serving out sentence in the Connecticut State Prison) :; when, thoroughly disgraced at home, cut off from all respectable society. he was sent to Bridge port, what he did there, and what he didn't do, how he returned to Winsted and what he has accomplished since. But of what avail? His character as the most despicable b1ackguard in Connecticut as the greatest scoundrel out of the penltentiary, as the most malignant liar and abuser of character, male and female, would not be frightened or enlarged. His whole history is only part of himself. It could not be differ ent and he the person he is. If he is too low and degraded for decent men to associate with, If his sheet IS obnoxious to every decent family in his district, if disappointed ambition only makes him more reckless and malignant, if he is disgrace to his friends and laughing stock of his enemies, if his lies come thicker and faster as he sinks in the scalo of moral decency and self-respect, if he is even now struggling to maintain precarious existence in the face of an indignant, frowning, scorning community, why should we wish to hit him a kick to send him faster and further down the ladder of infa- my and oblivion?
 With all due respect we must therefore decline to print any farther communications of our cor respondents regarding poor Clarke, and leave him to his fate. We do not care to render our self any longer obnoxious to the remonstrances of our best friends, that we should permit this paper to be the medium of any allus:on to so dlsgraceful character. We do not care to try to desc nd to such depths as we have done here tofore to notice him or his dolngs, or to put our self upon the same level of blackguard of his kind. We have long known the error of our way, and long despsed it, and we should long ago have foreborne to allude to him altogether. did we not deem the interests of the community and or this county demanded a thorough expos ure of this vile creature even at the severe cx- pense of our own feelings of self-respect. We believe now that-in this respect we have done all our duty, and we cannot suffer oursclf or our journal any longer to become the medium of re-
 plies even to the low-lived scoundrei's attacks upon and misrepresentations of our worthy fel- low citizens. If the people of the northern towns of this county are so sick and disgusted with the man(?) and his sheet, they have only to ig- nore the one and stop taking the other, and tAeir sentiments of self-respect at least will be saved
 We have no doubt, as a -Winsted correspondent of ours has already said in these columns, that the county will be purged of the pestilent fellow and his sheet before many months We have reason to know, from many sources, that he is at the last ebb. project, entertained in Win sted, of starting soon respectable paper in that village, to represent the honest Union men of that vicinity, will be the last straw that shall break the dromedary's back. Let us patiently wait then for this coming, and we shall then have Clarke's epitaph to write.
 That is all.