The Daily Cincinnati Republican, And Commercial Register

The following is the copy of a letter from an old and valued Democrat, of this city, to a young friend of his in the country. The young gentleman, no longer lukewarm, has requested its publication:

Dear Sir—You have now a chance of seeing the other side, and, consequently, a chance of correcting an opinion hastily formed by seeing one side only. One of the enclosed papers gives you the law for the prevention of counterfeiting, and a good deal of what I term candid and well written editorial matter. The other paper, the Republican, gives M'Grew's case before the Mayor; in which it appears, and no doubt will turn out beyond contradiction, that the Mayor has evaded the law and his duty altogether, from party feeling; that in place of submitting the case, as he was bound to do, to a proper court for trial, he has undertaken himself to go beyond his duty simply as an inquiring magistrate, and to stand as both court and jury, deciding on one of the highest crimes known to the laws.

There are but two other crimes of equal magnitude: they are, murder, and treason. And yet the opposition say, to aid in an attempt to bring a counterfeiter to justice is persecution, because the counterfeiter before sustained a good character, and because the crime was not committed for the purpose of pecuniary profit, but only for electioneering purposes. In other words, it was not to gain a sum of money, but simply and innocently to lessen the constitutional currency of the land in the estimation of what the opposition call the ignorant people—the farmers. The truth is, under such decisions, all crimes may soon become innocent. A Jackson or democratic printing office has just been burnt down, at New Lisbon, by the same party (for the same purposes) that counterfeit the coins of the United States mint; and murder may, with equal propriety, be tolerated.

You say you are lukewarm. Do you forget that you are now a free man? As such, is it not pretty certain that it is your duty, on account of your children and those around you, to look at the present tendency of the money party—the Bank party, and see what they will ask of you, should they in this contest get the ascendancy? Nothing less, let me remind you as a friend, than eventually to grade every man's freedom and political liberty on the scale of his nobility, his wealth, and his Greek and Latin attainments. Your father left you this legacy—"That all men are born free and equal." Take care that, being lukewarm and unguarded, you do not forfeit it! If the constitution, and this broad ground upon which it is framed, be wrong, and unfit for our country, it will be time enough to act on that principle when it is changed. At present, it is a democracy. I shall support it as such, and advise you to do the same.

I am mostly cautious how I advise any one, more especially my nearest friends; but it is a liberty that I may take with you, and be excused, particularly for the additional reason that I discover you to be wavering, in doubt, and lukewarm.

Your friend, &c.

Cincinnati, 16 Sept. 1834.