Richmond Enquirer

To the Editors of the Richmond Enquirer.

Gentlemen: Since my last communication, I have read the address reported by Mr. Johnson to the Adams convention of Richmond, and I find it to be a fabric of simulated fears raised on a foundation of antiquated slanders; void of facts, destitute of truth, and patched up with theological zeal and forensic stratagem. It reminds me of the men of straw, dressed in cast-off hats and coats and stationed as scarecrows in the corn-fields of Virginia. Decked in the pauper-stained garments of Binns, Gales and Hammond, it is calculated to deter very close examination, but as it is avowedly the work of Mr. Johnson, and looked on by him with the eyes of Pygmalion, I risk the displeasure of fastidious readers and undertake to expose it.

But do not the proceedings of this convention give birth to a reflection too solemn to be unuttered--that in the ruling state of this confederacy, a commonwealth teeming with patriotism, and rich in renown which, "when asked for her jewels, still points to her sons"--men of high station and repute, should be found, concerting by an organized effort the renovation of exploded falsehoods, in order to tarnish the fame of a private citizen, whose great exploits and popular virtues make him formidable to a weak and corrupt administration? And does it not add to the gloom of this reflection, that the holy places of prayer and the exalted tribunals of justice, should furnish recruits to this conspiracy, against the character of a venerable patriot, and the liberty of a youthful republic? But let not the lovers of freedom despond--let not the votaries of truth despair--let not the friends of the country tremble. The People are not only the fountain of political power, but of political hope. Guarded by the press, which in spite of the expensive efforts of Mr. Clay to seduce or intimidate it, is yet free; the institutions of our country will find strength and perpetuity against the machinations of the few, in the pure love of freedom which animates the great body of the nation. To their sure and sagacious patriotism, it is perhaps fortunate that frequent appeals are necessary. Even the labors of the Richmond Convention may in this way prove useful, as the serpents which Hercules strangled in his cradle, may be supposed to have invigorated him for the great task of cleansing the Augean stable. There is certainly much to admire in the rhetoric and the reason of Mr. Johnson, in founding a claim for the convention to peculiar sincerity and particular attention, upon the remarkable fact of the month of January (when they chose to assemble) being an "inclement season!" But he might have mentioned a much more extraordinary circumstance, and counted on the attraction of more general notice. He might have told the people of Virginia that he and his compatriots were careful to select the day which had been consecrated by more than half the nation, to the honor of General Jackson and to public gratitude--the day on which the altars of freemen burn with incense and their hearts with joy, for the more signal and embittered opportunity of pouring out upon him, a collected torrent of abuse: "That while the people of Louisiana were hailing him as their saviour, the legislature as their deliverer, the ladies as their protector, the children as their guardian, and the patriarchs as his friend, they had pre-determined to be employed in denouncing him in the name of that very legislature and that very people, as the slave of ignoble passions, the tyrant of Louisiana, the enemy of the people he saved, and the foe of that liberty which he defended. This would have constituted as effective an appeal to public notice as the shivering allusion to a January journey.

This frigid exordium gives place to a scale of their opinions respecting Mr. Adams, tenderly graduated from a shade of modest objection, to the florid glow of courtly adulation, where the manly tone for which Chapman Johnson once had credit through Virginia, is artfully lost in the pathic and pensioned phrases of the Whig; and for a harsh & unqualified avowal of their hostility to General Jackson. "Most of us," say they, "approve the general course of the administration, have confidence in its virtue, its patriotism, its wisdom, and see nothing to condemn in the President's interpretation of the federal constitution." "The measures which some disapprove in the present administration, none could hope to see amended under that of General Jackson." "The constitution which we would preserve from the too liberal interpretation of Mr. Adams, we would yet more zealously defend against the destroying hand of his rival."

With these fair and well digested sentiments, Mr. Johnson proceeds to controvert the accuracy of the general belief, that Jackson is the favourite of the people, in doing which, he falls into what logicians call a vicious circle, forgetting evidently that the best possible proof of that fact, is the general belief of it. And it happens accordingly, that the only reasonable part of his argument on this point, is what he doubtless thought no argument at all viz: a positive denial of it. He next endeavors to rebut the objections which have so widely prevailed and been so completely established to the last election, by misrepresenting them, as black legs give themselves a command over the cards by stocking them. "The friends of General Jackson," he asserts, "insist that his plurality of votes at the last election, proved him to be the choice of the nation." Now, the fact is, the friends of Gen. Jackson have done no such thing. They contended and do now contend, that his plurality of votes, placing him nearer to the point of popular preference, made decisive by the constitution, than either of his competitors, it was the duty of the representatives of the people, when they came to estimate the comparative claims of the candidates, to allow this circumstance great weight, and make it overbalance strong preferences for his rivals, or strong prepossessions against himself.- They further maintained that when the right of choice was transferred from electors appointed by the people, to electors delegated by the states, a fact which had not arisen in the first process, should have had a fair operation in the second--viz: that in several of the western states where Jackson was second to Clay before the people, he became first as soon as Clay was withdrawn. Mr. Johnson describes the primary election as popular and the secondary as federal; and he must admit that the moment which advanced the process from the primary to the secondary stage, expunged the name of Mr. Clay from the list of candidates, and left the popular will of those states to operate in favor of Jackson, Adams or Crawford. Their delegations were bound to give a genuine expression of that will, and to gather it from such facts as were then before them. They had to determine who was most popular in their respective states, Jackson, Adams or Crawford. If the Kentucky delegation looked to their polls, they found that the same evidence which proved Mr. Clay to stand before Gen. Jackson in the popularity of Kentucky, proved General Jackson to stand before Mr. Adams or Mr. Crawford. They knew that some of their own body preferred him even to Mr. Clay, that a large majority of the legislature of Kentucky were in favor of his election, and that a general impression resting on a mass of undoubted facts, existed that he was next to Mr. Clay in the estimation of the western people.

These were the only facts upon which they could found a faithful course of action at the time, and they could leave no doubt that if they made the will of the people the rule of their conduct, they should vote for General Jackson. The course of events has evolved others which confirm that conclusion. The elections in Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois, have proved incontestibly what Mr. Johnson earnestly denies, that in the last presidential Later Act he