The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

While the events of Mr. Russell's luckless controversy with Mr. Adams are fresh in the public recollection, it cannot be thought strange or uncandid that he should be suspected of some agency in the publication of "the Book"—against which a sentence of general and emphatical reprobation has gone forth. Whatever may be the political transgressions of Mr. R. and we certainly have no disposition either to palliate or to exaggerate them—he cannot forfeit his right to a just estimate of his conduct, bottomed upon a full and impartial understanding of facts.

Mr. Adams' advocate in the Newport Republican roundly charges Mr. R. with being the author of the Preface to the "Book," stating as a fact, of which a denial is challenged, that the publisher was at his house in Mendon, a short time before the Correspondence was published. The Newport writer also attempts to establish his charge, by the internal evidence resulting from a comparison of several extracts from the Book and from Mr. Russell's celebrated Oration. Proof of this description, is proverbially, fallacious, and we do not think that the quotations adduced by the Newport writer would be adjudged by any tribunal either of law or criticism, to exhibit "a similarity of style" sufficiently striking to warrant the inference which he has drawn.

The Worcester Aegis, a republican paper devoted to Mr. Adams, says, "We have the best assurances for believing that Mr. Russell did not write the Preface to the Correspondence, and that he was not the direct instrument in the production of the Letters to the public vision. And, indeed, we do not know, neither are we prepared to believe, that he had any agency, from the assurances of gentlemen, in bringing them before the public." The Worcester Spy, on the other hand, "is authorized to say, that although a certain distinguished member of Congress" might not have written the Introduction to the Cunningham letters, yet, that the publisher of them was closeted with him at his house two or three days, a short time previous to their publication."

We have collected above all the testimony which has fallen within our observation, respecting the alleged agency of Mr. Russell, in the publication of the Cunningham Letters.— We leave our readers to form their own conclusions.