Virginia Argus

The game which the Boston tories are playing can end only in their own ruin. In state affairs two things are certain: that if you trifle with people who are really suffering extraordinary privations, you will be apt to raise an insurrection: And if you endeavor to raise an insurrection, where there is no actual and extraordinary privations, you will fail. We speak of privations relative to the necessaries of life. In Massachusetts the people have plenty to eat and drink: and all the tragedy tones and gestures of Mr. Quincy will not persuade them to begin the business of cutting one another's throats. Quincy and Otis must go down. They have degraded their state, and they will fall. The republicans have just evinced their adherence to principle by a resolution to support for governor of Massachusetts the hon. Mr. Dexter. The republicans care not who the man is, if respectable and a true American in heart. Let him call himself what he may, except tory, and even that, if he acts the part for his country's honor and interest, he will be vigorously supported by the democracy. For ourselves, we feel no alarm at Massachusetts's blustering. Let her madmen go on and vote; what will it signify? We have more faith now than ever in the strength of the general government. Even in Massachusetts there are sound spirits enough to put down rebellion headed by such men as Josiah Quincy. His rhodomonades, his finger-work, his eye-browing, and his fainting in debate, are mere grimace—there is no seriousness in them; and they are wretched acting. If it be true, as reported, that Quincy and Otis have hired a mob to attend them at the legislature and to hurra for them when speaking, what is it but the old trick of the French jacobins to overawe good patriotism? The fate that awaits all such causeless violence may be read in history. The Americans are enlightened, humane, and forbearing. In any other community, were men to play the parts of Otis and Quincy, they would soon be hung by their own immediate fellow-citizens.