Virginia Argus

RICHMOND: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19

TO THE FREEMEN OF THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VERMONT.

Vergennes Falls, January 12.

Fellow Citizens,

WITH a heart truly overflowing with gratitude have I, in this dismal prison received the intelligence that you have again considered me as entitled to your confidence and worthy of your suffrages, as your Representative in the Congress of the United States.

A series of the most unwearied and unprecedented slander, detraction, and persecution that infernal ingenuity could devise, has not, it seems, convinced you of malevolence or corruption in me; nor of my want of discernment or attention to your true interests; neither have you been deterred by the threats or seduced by the flattery of an overbearing minority, from publicly manifesting by your free suffrages, the opinion you entertain on the questions now agitated in the U. States.

This undissembled conduct of yours, when constitutionally called upon for your sentiments, while it corroborates with the truly noble and generous efforts of the patriots of Virginia and Kentucky, in holding up to abhorrence, tyranny and unconstitutional laws, forms a most striking contrast with an address recently presented in your name, by men calling themselves your representatives.

Late in October they approve of measures your national representative had strenuously opposed, and in your name they spoke the language of flattery and adulation: early in December you are called to speak for yourselves, and you declare you will have the man to represent you in a future Congress, who has in the most pointed manner announced his aversion to pompous adulation and mean flattery; him who opposed those measures which these men approved.

The story has already been told, in every country where representative government is known, that one of the national representatives of the United States of America, has been imprisoned by the verdict of an American jury, for writing and publishing, that when the Executive are doing right they shall have his support, but whenever they should do wrong he would not be their humble advocate; for reading and suffering (unknown to him) to be printed, a copy of a letter of an American gentleman in France, speaking lightly of the wisdom of his country in provoking a war with that nation: A letter which has been published from many of the presses conducted by the partizans of presidential infallibility, without being in the least noticed.

Let this effulgent truth follow that story, that although two judges and thirty jurymen have been found to declare your representative guilty of evil intentions, more than three thousand five hundred enlightened freemen have declared him NOT GUILTY, and by their re-election have plainly announced that their confidence in him is unabated, and to his care and integrity they choose to consign their national interest for more than two years to come.

Fellow citizens, you have demonstrated how sensible you are, that pretended crimes have been made use of, merely to distress me and my family: to restrain me of my liberty, and to prevent my exercising the high trust you have confided to me. While my real crimes have been, refusing to sacrifice that sacred trust to the views of those who wish to see a luxurious court, crowded with shoals of military courtiers, speculators, and stockjobbers, fattening on the labors of the farmer and the poor mechanic. Invariable opposition to the means of increasing places and a standing army, by taxing yourselves, your paper, and your land; as well as an aversion to every measure which tends to involve this country in the politics and wars of Europe, may also be reckoned among my crimes, in the light of offended power.

Whenever jails and states shall become the common reward of patriotism and virtue, they will cease to be a terror and a shame to thieves and robbers.

It appears, that I have not offended you my fellow citizens, and it is my consolation and exultation, under this persecution, to know that I enjoy your confidence. This fresh testimony of your favor, under such extraordinary circumstances, adds to my obligations to be more and more your faithful servant.

M. LYON.