The New Hampshire Gazette

From the Independent Chronicle

To his Excellency Governor Strong.

Sir,

The public papers have announced that you dined with the Artillery Company, at their late anniversary, drank their toasts with approbation, and complimented them when you retired. Among the toasts were the two following; besides others of a similar character:

"The President of the United States, May he reserve his high spirit for the enemies of our country, and his forbearance for its friends,"

"As Virginia the parent of Washington. May he study to be his disciples, and learn to treat the sister states as her equals, &c. the union as her superior."

It is a matter of serious regret, that a gentleman in your exalted station should join in such mean, malignant, ungentlemanly sarcasms and insinuations against the President of the Union, and a respectable sister State. The example is pernicious; the Chief Magistrate of a State publicly insinuating insults upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation; exciting a narrow State jealousy between Massachusetts and Virginia, and thus practically promoting local prejudices, party passions and a spirit of disaffection, disunion and distrust! if President Jefferson, or Governor Page, were to retort the compliment, by uniting, at some public festival, in similar reflections upon the Governor and Commonwealth of Massachusetts; would you not think such treatment unpolite and improper? and would not the good people of this Commonwealth resent it? Have our brethren in Virginia less sensibility or pride than us? Do you not in this respect violate the rule of that religion, which you profess to believe; the golden rule of doing to others as you would have them, in correspondent relations, do to you? Do you not give occasion to your political opponents, in this and other States, to treat you, in their anniversary toasts, with like sarcastic insinuations? And can such mutual indignities produce any political good, or promote the peace and harmony of social life?

MONITOR.