The Portland daily press., 1863-01-03
The Portland Daily Press has the largest
regular circulation of any daily paper in
the city.


age, with the frosts of many winters upon 1t,
its new series reckoning thirty-three years,
and its whole existence being longer than the
century in which we live. A gentleman in
formed us the other day that it had been taken
in his family for eighty years. Another told
us he had himself taken it regularly for sixty
years, though both had stopped it because of
the almost daily installments of semi-treason
thrust in the faces of loyal men.
There is another adage-"whom the gods
destroy they first make mad, d,"-and we think
the evidence is not wanting that the sheet re-
ferred to is now laboring and writhing under
their displeasure. We infer this from the
madness that characterizes its regular issues,
for nothing short Of species of lunacy
grain traitor-to pursue the course that sheet
has followed for the last few months. Be this
as it may, its destruction seems foregone
conclusion. In June last we had the state
ment of its recently deceased editor-in-chief,
that its daily issue was nearly 2500. He stat
ed emphatically that ninety-two quires was
the minimum quantity Of paper used daily,
and that Saturdays, and frequently on other
occasions when the news was exciting, it would
run up to one hundred quires, and sometimes
far above that figure. That was before f. o.
J. Smith commenced to indoctrnate the peo-
pie of Maine with his new phi losophy, import
ed from the South, and of which John C. Cal
houn was the original diseoverer or revelator.
There is nothing new in the doctrines of the
Advertiser except the attempt to engraft the
scicns of Southern treason upon the parent
stock of our tree of liberty. The doctrines
themselves have been more forcibly explained
and more logically enforced, for five and twen-
ty years, by the men whom Benton and jack
son opposed for their evident disloyal designs
and tendencies, and by men now living and
active in the Southern rebellion, as well as by
numerous others who have been slain in the
struggle in which their infamous teachings
have eliminated.
But to come back from this depression. In
June, when the Press was started, the Adver-
tiser claimed minimum edition OF ninety-two
quires daily, and about sixty quires weekly,
and pompously paraded list of its quintuple
vi Po Va SNitoio-dh vi NHoui, odNC Oue,
now out of the concern-and now, where is it?
When its owner vaulted into the saddle. and.
making the "negro" the grand object of at
tack, commenced a regular bombardment
with his paper balls, OF everything that makes
freedom dear to an American, then that pile
of papers began to sink, and from that day to
this, whatever other expenses have been en-
tailed upon the establishment, its proprietor
has had the satisfaction { y of knowing that
the cost of white paper upon which to spread
his lucubrations has been daily decreasing,
We soon had vague rumors that ninety-two
quires had given place to eighty-five, then to
eighty, then to seventy-ive, and about the
time the pressman in the office had the mis-
fortune to lose his hand and the press suf-
fered damage, the fact was made known by
tn ose cho kne,c, that the daily issue had fallen
off to sixty quires, the tri-weekly to eighteen
quires, and the weekly issue to thirty-three
quires! "What fall was that, my country
menr'
But the sternway did not stop there. About
two weeks since the sixty quires daily had Civ
en- place to forty. five; and few days later
those who surely had the means of knowing.
stated to gentlemen that .forty:four quires,
(1056 sheets) was the entire edition. We will
only add in this connection that on New
Years day alone we added, Of new daily sub
scribers, two full quires, and nearly all of them
stated voluntarily that they had stopped the
Advertiser, for which they had paid in advance
to the end of the old year.
So wags the Advertiser under its new re-
ginae. poor old horse, let him dier' Salt
will scarcely save it: and in view of these
facts, and in consideration oil its being read by
SO small a number, we have it not in our heart
TO feel annoyed by its attacks upon the Press
To allow ones self to get vexed at its misrep-
or to feel concerned lest its at
tacks should create prejudice at his expense,
would be as unreasonable as to get mad at the
rawlings of maniac, or to feel annoyed by the
slobbering assaults Of an idiot.
We have had occasion heretofore to analyze
some of the political doctrines and teachings
Of the present editor of the paper under no.
lice, and to show up the successive steps
BY which he has reached his present bad emil
nence. We do not propose to go over that
ground again. There are several articles which
we marked and laid aside for convenient no
lice, but really to devote an article to it now,
seems too much like giving kick to a con-
,ern that is bound to go down hill. The at
Tempt of that editor, however, to convict us
Of disloyalty because we support the govern
ment, even though the last vestige of the slave
Institution fuse in the heat of the present strife,
is so refreshingly cool and impudent, that we
shall be pardoned if We, for single moment
hold him up in his own mirror In his paper
Of recent date-soon after the battle of
Fredericksburg-in the same number contain
ing Burnside's report, he had an article enti-
lied 'The Bunder of the War;" which con-
sttuted one of the grossest attacks upon the
that we have yet seen in any
paper, no matter what the locality of its pub
ication. We have noticed that article already,
'ut single paragraph we purposely omitted,
IS we thought it worthy of more particular at
.ention than we could then give it. After Civ
ng his own version of the slaughter at Fred
and of the madness and faulty of
'e4uiring Burnside to cross the river in the
ace of the enemy, against his own .judg-
nent, ~ the editor of the Advertiser said:
In any other land an army thus nisused
TURN AND DEP0SE THF pow !
THEM, and in the name Of liberty MOULD
APPOINT THEIR OWN LEADERS IN FT-
rURE, or take the conduct Of the ,cdr and
The terms Of peace INTO THEIR OWN