Southport Telegraph

The editor of the Milwaukee Courier labors under a very palpable mistake in connecting our name with certain public proceedings relating to Gov. Tallmadge's arrival among us. We had nothing whatever to do with them; not but we should have been most willing, whatever were the Governor's politics, to extend to him the most cordial greeting; but still it was not our luck to have had any thing to do with the proceedings which were had.

It is true, as the Courier says, before the Governor's arrival among us, we made a remark in the paper, based on assurances given us, that the Governor would not be known as a party man, for the purpose of dispelling any prejudice which might exist against him with either party, and had that assurance held good, we should have forgotten his past political life, and willingly rested under his administration.

But as the Courier says, we are afraid of his connecting himself with and acting with the Democracy. and it is this fear which impels us to speak. We fear to see a man occupying the front rank and holding important trusts, whose honesty cannot be depended on. By this means we subject ourselves, as a party, to great danger. At a moment when we least expect it our trust is betrayed, our flag is waving in the ranks of the enemy, and our own ranks, unable to tell their friends from their foes, are thrown into confusion and defeated.

Such was the case in New York; Gov. Tallmadge there occupied an exalted post at the hands of the democracy; in the hour of peril, he deserted, and the effects are well known. Shall the party in our territory, soon to become a state, blindly incur a similar danger? Shall we urge upon President Polk to make such a man the standard bearer for the democracy of the territory?

Think you, good friends, it would have been policy for General Washington, if Benedict Arnold in a moment of success, had thought proper to return to the American ranks, to have given him his old station of commander? The contest of 1844 showed pretty clearly who among us could and could not be depended on; our ranks were then thoroughly purged of all who esteemed the spoils of office paramount to the principles they professed.

We have no kind of objection to these men returning to the ranks and laboring with the democracy, but we have serious objections to their being at once entrusted with place and power. If we had our way, we should condemn Gov. Tallmadge and all others of a like political character, to such a probation in the ranks, as would make good their claim to repentance.