The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-05-31
FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 81. 1872
JOURNALISM RUN MAD.

The editor of the Lynchburg Republican
is in rage; nay, rage but feebly expresses
the extent of his distemper. He is exas-
perated to such pitch of frenzy that his
chatting is equivalent to about forty respect
able tempests in one diminutive teapot.
We have heard Of editors ''as mad as
March hare" but forty brace Of gray
hounds could not scare up as many
"March hares," or as much madness with
them, as this lunatic editor exhibits in one
paragraph of his distraught sheet. Had
we called him dog, or spit upon his gar
berdine, or "hindered him of half mill
lion," as Antonio did the Jew, he could
not have ragged worse or shown more un-
qualified lunacy in his editorial temper.
He does not admit that we even show "the
decency of thieves and pimps in their traffic
of guilt" but charges us with making
Zone of the viest propositions that ever
insulted the honor of Virginia, or as
founded her moral sense"
Now, we have not the personal acquant-
ance of the editor of the Republican, but
that he is fellow of infinite bombast and
most unlimited twilled cotton, we are ready
to concede; nay we do concede it as an act
fpresminentjustice, ifnot of fcondecension,
on our part. We have read " Orlando
Furioso," "Fustiana the " Adventures
of the Great Mambrino," the "Reected
Papers of the Kit-Cat and Scriblerus
Clubs" etc., etc., but this one editorial of
the Lynchburg Ftaioso knocks them all
casts them so completely into the shade,
that, were there any considerable number
of these works on the Grub-street market,
that entire book row would be in state of
beggary and destitution inside of twenty
four hours.
Let us Gull a few of it's flowers of rhetoric.
1t speaks of our proposition to so WELD the
electoral vote of Virginia as, in certain
contingency, to secure, if possible, from the
party in power a restoration of "our crown
jewels''-meaning, among others, the
counties east of the Allegheny range-as
one utterly " incredible for its excess of
infamy," as astounding for its effrontery,"
as ''the willingness Of bribe-trafficker to
stultify his own party" as 'self contradic-
ton too gross to support an argument" as
IAN argument silenced by the excess of alb
surdity, where even the dignity Of rebuke
is impossible, and where contempt and scorn
only struggle for utterance." But the writer
does not hold his breath even here. In
dealing more impersonally, and speaking of
the JOURNAL instead of its editor, he piles
his editorial scorn and contempt mountain
high-trundles Ossa upon Pelion, and sticks
Mt. Athos on top of both-and makes
himself $50 preposterously an ass" general
ly, that we can quote no further.
To reply to such rant and unmtigated
fustian as this, coupled with the accusation
that we are "the pmp of journalistic pros
titution," is to handy words with luna
tic, or fruhlessly chase up man Sin his
lunes." And yet the editor of the Repub-
lican is not so entirely in his lunes as he
would have us think i; for, in the same
breath in which he deals out this raat
and fustian, he speaks of our article as
one of the most important contri-
buttons that has yet been made" as "very
significant in some of its aspects" and as
"the first spoken result of the late
confabulation held by Grant with the
Virginia Radicals, including the editor of
the STATE JOURNAL, who were notorious
ly summoned to Washington to devise some
plan to corrupt the Presidential election in
Virginia."
And precisely here is the impertinence
that induces reply-one not demanded by
the article itself, but by the unwarrantable
inference that might be drawn from our
silence, We're it construed by any one into
assent. In the first place, we have never
been summoned to Washington to have any
interview with the President, nor have we
ever been there with any delegation to have
an interview with him, nor has any delega-
ton, to our knowledge, had any interview
with him on the subject of the Presidential
election in Virginia. The article in oues-
ton was written and published in the abb
sence, and without the knowledge, of the
managing editor of the JOURNAL, by the
assistant editor-in-chief, who holds himself
alone responsible for what is in this article,
if not for what was in that.
1t is well known to the readers of the
STATE JOURNAL that we do not assume
to speak for the Republican party when we
speak of Virginia, and the paramount in
terssts she may have at stake. What con-
Germs the common veal of this Common
+, wealth concerns us too vitality to warrant