Staunton Spectator

The Right Spirit.

We are pleased to find the following remarks in the Temperance Gazette, published at Lynchburg and Scottsville, by McDonald and Forbes.

The Gazette is a warm advocate of the Maine Liquor Law, and we trust speaks the sentiments of the Temperance party generally. Under the head of "Prohibition and the Press" that paper says:

But no doubt a large proportion of papers that oppose the prohibitory movement, do it from principle, and while we regret that they entertain such views, yet we admire their independence.—Let the independence of the press be preserved forever,

"It will have fallen beneath its high mission, and dignity and destiny, when with it principle yield to efforts to obtain public popularity. But when the press is divided the people should impartially examine the positions and weigh the arguments of either side, and sustain those in their views, which have justice and truth upon their side. Such a course in this case will result favorably to those who advocate the cause of prohibition."

Certainly it will result more favorably than the course pursued by some misguided zealots, who seek to proscribe every newspaper that does not advocate a prohibitory law. Those liberal-minded Temperance men who think they can bring the independent press into Liquor Law traces by the withdrawal of their little pitiful, two-dollar per-annum patronage, sadly miscalculate. It is true that a printer's purse is not usually very long, but it is generally able to spare the contributions of the few men who now-a-days seek thus to break down the freedom of the press.