Semi Weekly Standard

Insinuations have been thrown out in various quarters that the Editor of the Standard owes his success in life to James B. Shepard, and that he is acting an ungrateful part in opposing his election to Congress. The Register of a late date, speaking no doubt for Mr. Shepard, says:

"Its bitterness and malevolence [referring to the Standard] involve not only studied misrepresentation, but, it is said also, that crime, generally so regarded among men, that no one was ever known to confess it—we mean the crime of ingratitude." And this charge has been repeated, not only in the Register, but by that poltroon Brown, the Scotchman, in his letter published in the Star. There are also persons in this place—Raleigh—who have gone about the streets dealing out these mean and low insinuations against us—persons who, whatever their professions of piety or Church membership may be, are hypocrites and slanderers, and deserve to be posted as such before all honorable men.

And Mr. Shepard, we learn, frequently opens his denunciations of us by inquiring "who made the Editor of the Standard?" leading the uninformed to infer that he did it. He is, therefore, responsible for the circulation of these insinuations: and he knows that he has done us gross and inexcusable injustice. We may go into this matter at some length hereafter. Meantime we may state that we tried for a number of years to make Mr. Shepard, but failed in the effort, on account of his lack of industry and common sense. As soon, however, as he began to disorganize his party, we abandoned him; and now, because we have refused to give up our principles and support him for Congress, we are charged with the "crime of ingratitude"!

"To John I owe some obligation,

But John unluckily thinks fit

To publish it to all the nation,

So John and I are more than quit."

The Editor of the Standard never crouches to his enemies, nor turns his back upon his real friends. If gentlemen opposed to us in politics will have it so—but far be it from us to desire it—we say, if they will have it so, our personal friendships can go with our political associations. The President of the Know Nothing State Council, for example, P. F. Pescud, is very much exercised on account of our allusions to him in the Standard. When a man goes voluntarily into the ring political, he must expect to be handled. But we have made no attack of a personal nature on Mr. Pescud, nor do we expect to do so. Gentlemen, however—whether Church members or not—who proclaim on the streets, but not in our hearing, that if they were in his place they would go to the Standard office and make an assault on us personally, may just consider themselves Peter F. Pescud for a few minutes, and come and try it.