Lynchburg Virginian

MR. LEIGH.

The Enquirer threatens Mr. Leigh in the Tiresias' vein.—We quote a few of the raving sentences of the mad priestess: "The People of Virginia will not quietly submit to such an abuse—Their Delegates will be true to their trusts. The Press will openly, freely, and timely speak out. We have given in this day's paper several Essays from the pens of our Correspondents—and the war, which the Whigs have defied, will wax warmer and stronger." "The people of Virginia will not quietly submit to such an abuse." What abuse? Why, that Mr. Leigh shall take his seat in the Senate, to which he has been fairly elected by the representatives of the people! Is that an "abuse"? Why, it was but the other day that the Enquirer itself admitted that all it asked of Mr. Leigh, or had a right to ask, was to "resign or obey instructions." Why, then, is it not content to wait until he has refused to do one or the other of these things? Why does the venerable Editor of that paper,—the erstwhile friend of "Algernon Sidney," when both of them believed that Gen. Jackson's election would be a curse to the country,—why does he urge Mr. Leigh to resign now, before instructions have been given, much less disobeyed? How does he reconcile his present denunciations of Mr. Leigh, for determining to accept the office which has been conferred upon him, with his own previous admission that all which the opponents of Mr. L. had a right to demand was that he should either obey such instructions as may be given to him, or resign? The Enquirer, however, tells us that this supremely ridiculous clamor against Mr. Leigh "will wax warmer and warmer."—Its Ritten legions are fixing their lances in rest, and the whole band, led by the modern Julius Caesar, are to hurl them at Mr. Leigh throughout the summer! Does the Enquirer suppose that Mr. Leigh is vulnerable to such weapons, or that he can be deterred by such dotard threats from pursuing the course, which he has deliberately chalked out as the path of duty? We thought it knew Mr. Leigh better. All the "small politicians," whose nonsensical prolixions fill the columns once adorned by the magnificent essays of Roane and Hay, may fire their pop-guns until doomsday; but the Rock of Gibraltar will remain as firm as though no powder had been burnt. Mr. Leigh will take his seat, though "all Bedlam and Parnassus" be let loose, and the din of the battle deafen even the ears of the valiant combatants themselves. And still farther, he will discharge his duty, in that fearless manner which becomes a Senator of the Old Dominion. The time never was when the denunciations of the Enquirer could have driven Mr. Leigh from his course, though it has frightened many other more timid spirits.—But if that time had ever been, it is not now. Public opinion in Virginia is not now, as formerly, moulded in Mr. Ritchie's matrix. The people feel like dispensing with a thinking machine.