Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

From the Boston Centinel.

An honest and upright President can have no secrets which he would not wish to disclose to the people, unless a negotiation is pending which is not the present case. We are indebted to the able and correct editors of the Salem Gazette, always found in the foremost ranks of virtue and patriotism, for the remarks we are now about to make. Mr. Smith's case is not a new one. The infamous Edmund Randolph was dismissed by Washington for having been proved to be engaged in a corrupt plot with the agents of France. Randolph, a true democrat, had the effrontery to publish a pamphlet against Washington, and he applied to that illustrious man, whose "uniform" the democrats most impudently and foolishly affect to assume, to know if he should be permitted to disclose certain facts which had occurred in his official intercourse with Washington. How did that noble and illustrious man conduct? Did he, like Madison, shrink from the investigation? Did he upbraid or reproach Randolph with a wish to disclose executive and official secrets?

No.—Honesty needs no such artifices. See his reply and contrast it with that of the guilty Madison:—

"It is not difficult," said Washington to Mr. Randolph, "to perceive what are your objects; but that you may have no cause to complain of the withholding of any paper, however private or confidential, I have directed that you shall have the inspection of my letter of 22d of July, agreeable to your request:—And you are at full liberty to publish without reserve, any and every private and confidential letter I ever wrote you. Nay more, every word I ever uttered to you or in your presence."

Here, fellow-citizens, read and pause. Contrast this language and this conduct with that of Madison; and then ask yourselves which is the language of conscious virtue?—Ask yourselves, whether Madison, and Gerry, and Lincoln, and such degraded men, have a right to "assume the Uniform" of Washington, when they depart so much from his spirit?