Massachusetts Spy And Worcester Advertiser

Worcester, Wednesday, September 22, 1824.

CRAWFORD ADDRESS.

On the first page will be found the Address, reported by order of the late Crawford Caucus in this town, to which we have annexed such notes as occurred on perusal of it. The address is published by a committee, selected from the best talents present on the occasion, especially for the purpose, and may therefore be considered as a fair expose of the views of the meeting, and of the strength of the cause which they support: In this view of the subject we recommend it to a careful perusal and examination. If it shall be found, that from well established facts they have drawn such reasonable and just conclusions as to warrant the course they have taken, then, we say, let the public voice be with them. But if they have assumed that for fact which is untrue or unsupported by sufficient evidence, or if, by unfair deductions and sophistical reasoning, they attempt to mislead and deceive instead of enlightening the public, they will receive the odium to which such a course is justly entitled.

One fact is worthy of particular note. The writer of the address has brought forward charges of such a character, that, if they are true, friendship and gratitude would require that they should have proceeded from some other source. A Citizen of unblemished character, heretofore the second officer in the State, and now a Judge of our highest judicial tribunal, is accused of a surrender of personal independence, so degrading as to make a pledge, binding himself at a future day to vote for a particular candidate for the first office in the Union, although that candidate may in the mean time have forged a pretended duplicate, or have shot his friend with a pistol; a pledge so dishonorable, inconsistent and unprincipled, that to defeat his election will be "the triumph of honor, of consistency and of principle." But this is not all; it is not this individual alone but fourteen others, all of high standing and respectability in the Commonwealth are made participators with him in the same act. Those who are acquainted with either of them, we apprehend, will be slow to believe such an accusation till they are furnished with some evidence of its truth, more than has yet been adduced.

Crawford caucuses have been held in Essex South, Middlesex and Norfolk Districts, at which thorough-going Crawfordites were nominated as candidates for Electors. The meetings presented "a beggarly account of empty boxes," especially the two latter, at one of which there were thirteen persons, and at the other fifteen. From more than two-thirds of the towns in both districts not an individual could be mustered.