Walla Walla Statesman

General MeDowell has declined to permit the revival of any of the newspapers recently suppressed by the mob in San Francisco, on the ground that the public interest will not admit of publications of that character. The respectable journals of San Francisco condemn the mobocrats and their late wanton destruction of private property. The Bulletin says there was more love of plunder, confusion and riot in the feelings of the rabble, than love of country. A San Francisco correspondent of the Sacramento Union, characterizes the transactions of the mob as "a business demonstration;" and says one newspaper was bent on "cleaning out its more successful contemporaries," and hence thought that their apparatus had better be tumbled into the street. The correspondent adds that the affair was checked in its career; that had it been otherwise, "monopolies would have become the order of the day." That is to say, had the mob not been checked, there would have only been left a newspaper monopoly to conduct the printing business in San Francisco! What a glorious consummation that would have been—for the remaining newspaper offices. But if it was such a great crime in the plundering rabble to destroy those printing offices, how comes it that General MeDowell in part justified it? and how does it come that he can interpose to prevent their re-establishment? Is the General's authority greater than the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States? The Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the Press."

Congress can make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the Press; but General McDowell must be greater than the Constitution or Congress, for he can abridge both the freedom of speech and of the press with impunity. Is this the freedom the soldiers and officers in the United States service have for the past four years been fighting for? If so, we have greatly misunderstood the principles which the war has been waged to maintain. We have thought the war was prosecuted to maintain a free government—to maintain the Constitution, with all its guarantees of liberty to the citizen, and for the purpose of punishing those engaged in the war against the Constitution and laws of the United States. But if the vital principles of the government, and the plainest provisions of the Constitution are to be subverted and set at naught by officers of the army, then the war for the preservation of liberty and Union has been a miserable failure, and the citizens of the United States are subjugated to accept any kind of government or despotism that the military arm of the government may see fit to vouchsafe them. In the language of a contemporary, if free criticism can no longer be tolerated in this country and irresponsible mobs are to be upheld in destroying the private property of citizens, who have violated no law, "then farewell to the liberty of the Press—the brightest and most inestimable jewel in the diadem of free America;" and all hail to the advent of a new era, when drunken rabbles, and the military heroes of disgraceful retreats and battles lost, will lay down the rules which shall guide a once free Press in its conduct.