Republican Herald

We have repeatedly called the attention of the tax paying people of Rhode Island, the hard working farmers and the mechanics, to the profligate expenditures and prodigal waste of the public moneys by our Federal legislature, in grants to military companies, and we shall reiterate our complaints against that body for such enormous expenditures, until our citizens, one and all, whether Federalists or Democrats, open their eyes to the danger which threatens to annihilate their civil rights. Our opponents are aware of this just ground of complaint, are alarmed at the disapprobation of the candid and honest portion of their own party, and are apprehensive that a change in public opinion, will, at no distant period, hurl them from their seats of abused power, covered with disgrace. The organ of the armed minority therefore, as in duty bound, comes forward to apologise for the profligacy of the legislature, and to justify their extraordinary grants "in aid of the military companies," and a long and labored apologetic article appears in Saturday's Journal, displaying its sycophancy to that body, and showering the vilest abuse on the Democracy. It ascribes the complaints to the Dorrites and insurgents; and repeats again its long list of "cuckoo notes" of abusive epithets against the friends of equal rights, with the exception of "beauty and the banks," which, for some reasons connected with recent transactions of some of their friends, they have at this time omitted. It is lavish in its praise of the "little white plume," the "gallant militia to which the State is under such lasting obligations." It admits the application of the term "military despotism" to our present government, and boasts of its improvement since it was first imposed. It thinks that there never was a time when a perfect organization of the military was required more than the present—and possesses circumstantial evidence, which it does not disclose, which convinces the clique "that the Dorrites have [not] abandoned their schemes upon the security and the liberties of the State'! As a disclosure of these circumstances might be considered premature at this time, it is supposed they will be reserved until a farther disclosure is made of the affairs of the Agricultural Bank, which was so singularly frightened out of its funds, not by actual assault, but by the mere war cry of the "insurgents" of "beauty and the banks."

The Journal article has a two fold object—to deceive their Federal friends, and to abuse the Democracy of the State. The writer, at the time he wrote it, knew that if there had been cause for a strong military organization from the menaces of any portion of the friends of equal rights, that that cause does not now exist. That party is unarmed, and though an acknowledged majority of the adult population, would be unable to assert their rights at the point of the sword; but had they the power they have not the disposition to adopt that method. The statement of the Journal is deceptive, and intended to silence the censure of many of their own friends of the wasteful extravagance of the legislature, by assigning reasons which have no existence in fact, and which the writer knew to be uncandid, unfounded and untrue. It is an imputation against the common sense of their own friends, to suppose them capable of being satisfied with such reasons; to suppose they could believe that the "Dorrites" meditate an attack, with arms in their hands, on the present government, and with such sufficient number and strength, as to justify our present Federal military organization, which is kept up at an extravagant, alarming and constantly accumulating expense.