The Recorder

FROM THE BALANCE.

To the EDITORS.

AT this alarming crisis, while political doctrines are advanced and measures are attempted, by men high in office, which are utterly subversive of the liberty of the press, it is necessary to test the present conduct of some of the leaders of the democrats with their former professions and to expose their hypocrisy to the view of the public. For this purpose, I request you to republish an extract from a pamphlet, containing a number of letters, which were directed to president Adams: and also to publish my remarks upon it. At the same time, I advise you to be cautious: for the late resolve of the Virginia assembly, and the speech of governor M'Kean, which has been followed by a public avowal, that truth itself is libel, induce me to believe that there is a systematic plan to muzzle the federal presses.

Your monitorial and agricultural departments are safe: but in regard to politics, I warn you not to publish the whole truth. You may yet have cause bitterly to remember the old adage, namely, "the truth is not to be spoken at all times." Therefore, if there should be any sentiment in my remarks, that will expose you to the lash of the new republican law, I wish you to suppress it.

But to the point.---In the first number of the aforementioned pamphlet, the writer, after declaring the sedition law to be unconstitutional, proceeds and concludes as follows:

"Yet, Sir, however clear your opinion, however decided your conviction may be, on this great constitutional question, there is one point in which we must all agree. It is a truth which cannot be denied, a truth supported by facts, as notorious as they are alarming, that the sedition act is in the highest degree dangerous and inexpedient. In this part of the world it is justly regarded as an attack on the liberty of the press, and has roused the attention of the supine. It has inflamed that spirit of suspicion and discontent, which, unfortunately for the people, has been already too powerfully excited, and has a direct and obvious tendency to produce the very crime which it professes to punish. God forbid that I should say, that such was the object for which the law was made. If I entertained an opinion so dishonorable to my countrymen, so disgraceful to humanity, my soul would sink with horror and despair. But I cannot despair. Truth, liberty, and virtue, must prevail in America, and I therefore believe, that the servants of the people, will not continue a law, merely because it has passed, when they know, when they see, that the evil which it has already produced, infinitely outweighs all the good which they expected to obtain."

HORTENSIUS.

Virginia, Jan. 1799.