The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

The following piece was offered for publication on Thursday last, but too late for insertion in Friday's paper. As our correspondents do not appear likely to convince each other, it is to be hoped that they will close their controversy. Some expressions in the following piece, deemed too harsh for publication, have been omitted or changed.

X

TO MY NEIGHBOR X.

I was in hopes that after having received a gentle and amicable rebuke for your misrepresentations in regard to this city, you would, at least, not have repeated them. I am however disappointed, and shall take the liberty, although I am one of those plain mechanics whom you say you admire, of being perhaps a little harsher than I was in my first reply. In this, I presume, I shall be justified by all who now see and hear you perversely declaring that you will maintain all the points you before stated as true, excepting as to the lighting of Georgetown. It is impossible that this can be the effect of ignorance only; it is either an innocent disregard of truth, or at least a combination of the two. You have accused me of personality. I know not where you find it. Surely not in the incidental mention which I made of the names of two or three gentlemen without the slightest indelicacy either in word or thought towards them. I never before knew that the mentioning of names constituted personality; and rendered 'the freedom of the press nugatory!'—We must not say then that Washington, Franklin, &c. were the benefactors of their country: that Hampton, Poydrass, Carroll, &c. are wealthy men: that 'Young, Laird and Barlow are monied gentlemen.' I confess I always supposed that personality resulted from, or depended on, the manner in which names were used, and the matter applied to the bearers of them.

By undertaking to serve the new bank, you profess to mean to serve the city. The public confidence is of all other things most important to the city: and you, forsooth, proceed to state that the city is languishing and in ruins,' in order to serve the bank! What effect pray has this picture on public confidence, or the opinion of the world? Under pretext of administering a dose of medicine, you infuse a deadly poison. In order to do us a partial good, you do us an universal, or at least a general, evil. Or, to make a comparison familiar to myself, you act as my carter would do, if he were to harness a treble team of horses to the back of his cart, whilst he has but one poor half starved animal in front. It has lately leaked out amongst us mechanics, that this is not the first attempt you have made to injure the city, notwithstanding your boast that "there is not an inhabitant in the city who in his very limited sphere has labored more for its welfare!" And I now think it my duty thus publicly to pronounce both your publications injurious libels upon the city. It will not benefit you here to complain of my having left unnoted an important sentence in your first publication. To give to it all the force which even you now demand, it would merely go to contradict, in part, or to neutralize the general contents of your libel. Then you mean to prove and disprove the same thing, at the same time! We are languishing & in ruins,' and our improvement is progressing!' But, besides that this neglected paragraph is incorrect in fact, inasmuch as we had the advantage of the branch bank of the U. S. in our most untoward and unprosperous times, it is evidently but a miserable shift dragged in at the tail of your piece not to cover its deformity, but for another purpose. It may, if it be consistent with the rules of rhetoric and composition, of which I am no judge, be called a spur to prick us up. Because one bank has done something, ergo the new bank must do every thing! But as "the subscription is now full & overflowing it is not worth while to say another word upon the subject!" Really! then your only object was to establish a bank, no matter what becomes of us afterwards! I pray you to take us poor mechanics under your protection. Do not disregard and throw us by, the moment you have our money. Recollect you are "acquainted with many mechanics of skill and industry, some of them having families, who came hither between 1793 and 1794 who have expended the substance and youth they brought hither, and are now too poor to get away, and too much decayed to be benefited by our grow."