The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1867-04-23
Letters from the People.


Editor Of the Register:
Before / leave this quiet retreat in
the mountains, would briefly refer to
the recent Court at Huntersville. There
was no panoply, no parade. The Judge
came without q flourish of trumpets,
and men who were desirous of testing
each others weight in the scales of Law,
came also quietly, peaceably and in the
best of humor. The only hotel here
was filled to its utmost capacity, and in
truth it reminded me more of a social
gathering of friends, than a crowd Of
citizen litigants.
With such impressions, leave this
peaceful village. Farewell, We grand
old hills! The sunlight that gilds your
brows, this blessed morning, with Sc
rene lovliness, is the orrihamme of God,
cheering US up with the promise of
peace and freedom. The silvery rills
that laughingly bound down your
sides with songs Of joy, fin my soul
with hope. The Infidel may doubt, but
ye are the messengers of faith in this
solitude that flood my soul with the
glorious melody of liberty.
We are
conquered. That we do not deny, and
hold it to be quite foolish in any COM
munity to complain where there is no
opportunity of redress. What was the
condition of affairs at the time of the
surrender and for months after? People
who dared not speak could not defend
themselves from base, low, accusations
with which the whole country was
flooded, and which were hawked
through Europe by mendicant scrib-
blers from an ex-page of. Congress to
mouldy historian translated from q
New England shelf to plenipoten-
tiary's easy chair. How stands the case
nowi Congress, thank Heaven, justi-
fes us, and those who cursed before,
bless us now. Jacobin rule and JacO-
bin rulers live and die in confusion, and
the inchoate clements they would fuse
like the creations of Frank
enstein, become their terror and their de-
struction. This narrowing of the iron
prison frame on our body to become
coffin, was tried before, elsewhere, and
failed. 1t will fail again. Resistance
on our part would not only strengthen
our enemies, but damn us, and while
we quietly submit to tyranny in the
shape and sembldace Of Constitutional
freedom, it shows We are attached to
the old spirit Of liberty. If we give up
the form left us, we will have no land
mark to guide us, and to hold by. If
we give up the torn dress, all will be
gone. With patience and manly forti-
tude we can win back the soul to the
grand tenement it loved to abide in.
Let elimination and recrimination be
eschewed. The time lost in such fren-
zied indulgence, if properly used, would
be more valuable. There are wounds
to be healed. Forgive and forget is q
maxim not new, and they who fought in
contending ranks ought to know the
magnanimity belonging to "a true man.
Here-everywhere go, l find that
the unforgi wing are those who would
not fight when contending flags were
unfnrled; but now that brave men are
no longer in the field, and the loud roar
of cannon and the shrill voice of the rifle
are hushed, these valiant sons of liberty
are brave while their betters are silent.
Law is now their resource, and where
reason and truth were once supreme,
canting hypocrisy and venal falsehood
are omnipotent. And what can we do
but submit, and what else should We
do' Let us not, then, cavil nor wran-
gle. We are not degraded. Who suf-
fers for a principle still fights in the
ause of right.
No man of common sense can look on
the action of our Solons at Wheeling
without little decent disgust. From
the Knownothing exhumer Harris,
down to the Mann of Greenbrier, and
the literary censor FarnswOrth, there is
not an intermediate character of note,
and perhaps so much the better. Danny
Mann in Grifiin's "Collegians," sublime
ly tempted on the mountain, the unfor-
tunate "Hardress Cregan." The Man
of Greenbrier-not Of Ross-tried to
tempt among the mountains of Lewis
county young rebel lady. From
Wheeling he sent his photograph to
her, and to him she sent in return the
likeness of a jackass-"Kiss me for my
brother
And as to the press; why, from the
Journal of Charleston to the InteUigea-
Ger. and down again to the Ritchie Press,
(from all evil OLord deliver us,) / can
see scarcely anything that would not
autborize n rigid interference with the
boasted liberty of the press. Base,
grovelling and audacious, it uses insult
instead Of reason, falsehOOd for truth
and revenge instead of honor. Not q
ray of beautiful thought illumines the
black page of its infamy, and like
flying raven its wing always lets fall
shadow. Like the Biddy Moriarty OF
O'Connell notoriety it will exhaust it
self by the force of its own virulent ma
ignity.
The greater part of this have writ
ten in Lewisburg. l may be soon
among the mountains, and then / will
inhale the spirit of liberty so often lost
and so often won. Liberty whose glory
is protection, whose life and light
dwells where the family sits in tho glow
of religion; Liberty, whether its de-
fender and exponent live on the Seine
or is trampled into the mud of the Po-
tomac, of il shall l write in my next.
The mud-lark of the Ritchie Press will
then notice again. = '
Your Irish friend,
"TERRY O'NEIL."