The Bedford Gazette

A Know-Nothing Committee.

The following sketch of a K. N. Committee is by one of their own organs, the New York Herald:

Burglarious Proceedings of the Massachusetts Legislature.—The whole evidence has been published and it now stands confessed to the world that a committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts have violated the highest laws of the land by forcing their way into a private seminary at Roxbury, and trampled under foot the rules of decency by insulting the harmless, defenceless females whom they found there. The Legislature had no right to appoint a committee to enter any private dwelling house, whether used as a school or for any other purpose. Such an act was beyond their powers; and if the owner of the seminary they entered had shot them dead on the threshold, the law would have held him harmless. There was no danger of anything of the kind, the house being occupied by ladies, and the committee proceeded on their task fearlessly.

Having entered the building, they proceeded to acts of blackguardism and indecency when the worst mob could hardly have exceeded. Some scattered and searched the private rooms of the institution, leaving but one linen closet which happened to be locked unsearched. Others followed the Superior, questioning her in a rude indelicate manner, and behaving as they might have done had the building been an asylum for penitents instead of a private school. One brute forced himself into a bedroom where a poor sick girl lay in bed, and approached her so closely that "she felt his breath on her face." Another actually placed his hands on the person of a female teacher. Several of the party thrust themselves into the chapel and by their rude irreverent language, frightened away a lady who was in prayer at the time. And the men who did these things are members of the Massachusetts Legislature!

So far as these individuals themselves are concerned, the bare statement of their conduct is more crushing than any epithets however severe or however merited. But the American party has a duty to perform, which cannot be neglected. The Massachusetts Know-Nothings must purge themselves of the society of such men as these. The members of the order in the other States can have no communion with individuals who break into houses, or insult defenceless females: and if the Know Nothings in the Bay State do not cleanse their ranks by expelling such agents of defilement, the order will cut itself adrift from the councils of Massachusetts.