The Massachusetts Spy

Backing one's Friends. The last Yeoman under the caption of "Unstable Candidates," complains that "The Anti-Masons have been greatly annoyed at different times and places by candidates pretending to be favorable to their cause, when in conversation with them, and after obtaining their nomination, deserted them." It seems to think, however, that they have no longer need of "resorting to double minded intriguing, second rate fence-men for candidates for office," and that they will "rise with new life and courage." "Call you this backing your friends? A plague on such backing, I say." With what fury would the mighty editor of the Yeoman have pounced upon us, had we said the same thing of the Anti-Masonic candidates, that he has thus voluntarily confessed respecting them. We have always respected the motives of the great body of the Anti-Masons, but we have believed that they had wolves among them in sheep's clothing, taking advantage of an excitement, originating in the purest and best of feelings, and giving it a political direction to subserve their own selfish purposes. When this comes to be acknowledged—inadvertently, as it probably was—by their own organ, it certainly cannot be called illiberal in us to echo the sentiment.