Daily National Intelligencer

CALUMNY.

Gouverneur Morris apostrophises Democracy as 'savage and wild.' The federal papers continually urge the charge of dealing in calumny, against the republican papers. The minority assumingly claim all the morality and all the religion, which is left to ameliorate and bless the country. It is fit that we glance at the foundation of these claims. If the party who urge them, are so pure in their lives and conversation, so free from guile and malice so aloof from calumny; it certainly would afford a strong testimonial in favor of the correctness of their tenets, and it would require imposing evidence to convince us that those principles were themselves wrong, which were so purely and magnanimously maintained.

Is Federalism thus pure, thus liberal and thus decent? We will venture to touch upon a few, points, which may lead us to a just answer. 'Let us not go back to the stormy administration of Adams Though it would strengthen our case, (for who has forgotten the floods of abuse, which flowed from the presses of Fenno and Cobbett; when the domestic circle was invaded with as little reluctance as the legislative hall?) we will commence our examination, at the commencement of the republican administration of Jefferson.

Was ever language tortured so assiduously, and ingenuity so put upon the rack, as to devise sufficiently malignant charges against this man, and sufficiently violent invectives against his compeers ? And when i Why in advance. Before he had assumed his official functions. His inaugural speech, temperate and conciliatory, hardly kept the blood hounds of faction at bay. Some of those, at whose word or whistle they run, restrained them, and cunningly endeavored to convert a professed determination to evince impartial justice into a surrender of principle. But no sooner was that very principle of impartial justice attempted to be carried into effect, in the equalization of the tenor of office, than the Federal press poured out a deluge of calumny, such as no civilized country ever before witnessed.

Shall we revert to the disgusting details of the self-punished Callender ? Shall we recur to the avidity with which fabricated tales, representing one of the most amiable men on earth and the first magistrate of our country, as degraded by every vice, were seized and hurried through the presses of the opposition ; rolled as sweet morsels under the sanctified tongues of New England clergymen; when doggrel verses and luscious allusions swarmed in our right pious opposition prints, in despite of abashed modesty and indignant candor ?

No. Be those days forgotten. Let high-minded republicans, to save the credit of their country. forbear to revive the details which would, indeed humble their opponents, and fix the charge of calumny where it rightly belongs. But has federalism ever. intermitted this game of calumny ? Has this moral, this religious party, this salt of the earth, ever ceased to persecute the decencies of life ? Shall we name the Georgetown Common Sewer, the Boston Scourge, the Philadelphia Tickler ? For shame. If federalists have not the virtue to be candid or decent; let them at least cultivate the "credible modesty" of silence; nor awaken indignation by ill-judged and pharasaic professions.

Balt. Pat.