Gazette Of The United States

FOR THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES.

The writers against government, like the Pharisees of old, seem to make up a very good mouth, thanking God that they are not as other men. It is very probable they are right, and we may with good cause thank God that he has not made all other men like them—for in that case the world would be turned topsy turvy.

These writers affect to be the friends of the people, champions of republican liberty, and men of more purity than those who hold offices, or who wish to support good order—that is to say, they pretend to be better than the rest of mankind. If the sun were to shine into their dark holes, their bragging pretensions would perhaps expose them to ridicule. In another country, the garret-scribblers talk big as long as they lie concealed. It would be pleasant to see their lean host marshalled. Those who give law, as far as dictating and finding fault will go, to nations; who affect to sit in judgment on kings, and to say to power, thus far (not very far) shalt thou go, and no farther, would certainly laugh at one another, and themselves if they were brought together. The thrones of these gazette kings are placed up three pair of stairs: they descend from their power when they show themselves in the street. This is certainly true of the greater part of the scribblers in one foreign city, and a great city it is. As our party writers have adopted the polite style of their Grub-street progenitors, there is room to believe that they are their peers in rank and dignity.

Instances are not wanting to countenance the opinion that some of the most audacious slanderers of government are not more respectable. A boy of 16 has been known to write political pieces in a gazette in which he chattered about men in high office like a magpie. Besides, men who have character, are the most cautious how they attempt to take it away from others. But the man who never had any, or having had some, has lost it, can write abusively against public men without measure, and without any feeling to check him—for he cannot make the case of the man he rails at, his own. He is more likely than a good man to believe ill of his adversary, and he can abuse him therefore with a better conscience. For when he sees a man in a public place, which is exposed to dirty temptations, he takes it for certain, judging from his own heart, that he has basely yielded to them. Let a man, having nothing to do with the government, but standing impartial, read the base aspersions which have lately been thrown on public men and measures. He will say, if he has a good heart, that he had rather be the subject than the author of them—he will say that those hearts which could nurse such suspicions, and those men who could publish them without proof, have shown what and who they are.

Z.