Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

To the Federal Republicans of Portland.

THIS DAY, Fellow Citizens, you are invited to exercise a most important privilege and perform a most responsible duty in the choice of town Officers for the ensuing year—Your opponents have exerted every nerve, and adopted every artifice, to remove those worthy, faithful and long tried friends, who have filled the various offices in town, with so much honor to themselves and fidelity to their Constituents.—Not satisfied with the ordinary means, they have appealed to the Legislature, and a law has been passed for the express purpose of revolutionizing this and some other towns in the Commonwealth. By this law every man of twenty-one years of age, who has resided in town one year, and is not actually supported by the town as a pauper, is permitted to vote in the choice of town officers. Why a distinction has been made, and those permitted to vote in the choice of officers who have no voice in other town affairs, it is impossible to conceive; unless the law was designed for party-purposes. Indeed your adversaries boast that this was the object of the law. But, fellow-citizens, notwithstanding all these arts and intrigues, it is still in your power to defeat their designs, if you will exert yourselves and do your duty like good citizens—a duty at all times important, but doubly so at this eventful crisis.

Let no consideration prevent your going early to the polls—it is a duty you owe yourselves, your friends, your children and posterity. Your adversaries boastingly declare that if they can triumph over you in the choice of Town officers, the victory is theirs, and they are sure of success at future elections, both of town and state officers. Are you ready to bow your necks and submit your dearest interests to these men? Look at the malignant and cruel manner in which your worthy Selectmen have been persecuted the year past, for having independence and firmness to discharge their duty with honesty and fidelity.

Look at the proceedings of the democratic Legislature and Executive, and I ask whether you are ready to entrust your dearest rights and privileges to the hands of men who are the avowed advocates of these unconstitutional and destructive measures? Who are the men your adversaries would palm upon you. Are they more honest, more capable, more attached to the Constitution than those who have served you faithfully for years? No, they are many of them incompetent to the duties of the offices for which they are candidates. They have no other claims to distinction than that they are noisy democrats, violent partisans, who now claim your patronage as a reward for their zeal in a bad cause.

Rouse then, Fellow-Citizens, from your slumbers before your locks are shorn. Remember that every man has an important and interesting duty to perform, and let every one perform it manfully. Let no one reproach himself hereafter, that by his negligence the town has been revolutionised and its important and vital interests entrusted to men who are unworthy of confidence Let no private interest, local prejudices, or personal animosities deter you from your duty or abate your zeal.

Remember that a sense of duty requires a sacrifice of all these feelings to the public good; and come forth in your strength; be active, vigilant, firm, united, and the victory is yours.