Lynchburg Virginian

THE VIRGINIAN

LYNCHBURG, AUG. 3, 1829.

"I AM SIR ORACLE."-[Shaks.

We have never seen a grosser piece of egoistical cant than is contained in the leading editorial article in the Richmond Enquirer of the 24th of July. Some dozen or more Editors having noticed the recent enlargement and improvement in the appearance of the Enquirer, furnished it with a fair opportunity of indulging that vanity which has always been its most conspicuous characteristic-not barely in acknowledging its gratitude and returning its thanks for the cordial good wishes expressed for its success, but in assuming a superiority of rank over its cotemporaries which has long rendered it an object of laughter and ridicule to those who know with how much greater regard to decency several of them are conducted, and at how sightless a distance the Enquirer is left behind many of them in point of ability. The Editor of the Enquirer should not have been so much elevated, by the eulogy of his professional brethren, when he might have recollected that even such a skunk as Duff Green is bepraised by some of them.

With a semblance of great humility, the Enquirer "disclaims all Editorial arrogance," and yet, in the very same breath, intimates that it cannot condescend to notice the Baltimore Patriot, (a paper, by the way, decently and ably conducted;) sneers at the Petersburg Intelligencer; abuses the Editor of the Whig, as usual, by innuendo; endeavors to create an impression that the National Intelligencer has lost the high character which it has always possessed and deserved; and winds up with insinuations against the intelligence of the Boston Palladium and the candor of the U. S. Gazette.

Now, it so happens that there is not one paper mentioned above which does not sustain a more enviable reputation than the Enquirer itself-not one which has prostituted its columns to the advocacy of the pretensions of a man to the highest office in the gift of the people whom it had not very long before denounced as a despot, and whose election to the same office it had deprecated as a "curse"-not one of them, we hope, and believe, which would consent to be the retailers of the falsehoods which are daily coined, and circulated by the immaculate Duff, and the slanders and abuse which teem in the columns of the Baltimore Republican. And, yet, the Editor of the Enquirer, with these and other evidences of his delinquency fresh in his recollection, talks of the "lofty and liberal spirits" with whom alone he can consent to enter the lists! Had he forgotten, too, that two of the Editors whose "lofty and liberal spirits" rendered them "worthy of entering the list with any antagonists," are in the habit of treating the Intelligencer and its Editors, in all their controversies, with marked civility and respect, while they denounce the U. S. Telegraph and its Editor, whom the Enquirer seems to have selected as its model of what "gentlemen" should be, in no measured and certainly not unmerited strains of vituperation? The Enquirer must have received the Georgia Recorder at the time it penned its remarks, containing a severe philippic against Duff Green-regretting that the cause of Gen. Jackson, (of whom the Recorder is a supporter, and for whom one of its Editors, as an Elector in Georgia at the late contest, voted,) should be disgraced by its association with such an advocate-at once a sample of the most unblushing impudence and the most consummate profligacy. The Enquirer must have very perverted notions of truth and decency, when it discards the Intelligencer, and other papers of a similar cast, for their want of these qualities, and takes for its associates the United States Telegraph and Baltimore Republican! After all, we shrewdly suspect that the Enquirer's opinions on this as on most other subjects, are the offspring of prejudice, arising from political opposition or association, as the case may be and not upon any defined standard of merit or demerit.

The Enquirer seems to think, too, that it has lost none of its influence, because it has lost none of its circulation. This is an erroneous opinion; as many individuals take it, in order to procure the reports of legislative proceedings &c. &c. (for no one will deny to the Enquirer great industry) who, instead of being influenced by the Editorial remarks of that paper, always make it a point to pass them over unnoticed. They can place no dependence on the opinions of a man which, in the short space of two years underwent so serious a revolution without the existence of a single fact or the occurrence of a single circumstance to justify the change. We think, however, that it is in wretched bad taste to advertise how many subscribers a paper has, how many it loses and how many it gains per diem. We should as soon expect a Doctor, Lawyer or Merchant to make as public a parade of the number of their patients, clients and customers, and their gradual increase or decrease.