Daily National Intelligencer

The Editors have received from Mr. B. Irvine, formerly Editor of the Baltimore Whig, a letter under his signature, and dated on the 27th instant, in reply to an article in the National Intelligencer of that date, under the signature of "L," wherein he conceives injustice to have been done to him. The Editors, in obedience to that duty which has prescribed to them the invariable exclusion of personal controversies from their columns, feel themselves under the necessity of refusing admission to this communication in extenso, but not to that part which states facts directly bearing on the question at issue, which, in justice to Mr. I. is copied below.

"We are carried back to the party-warfare of February 1811, when the question of renewing the late United States bank was agitated before the Senate of the United States. In that moment of excitement, no charge was unmade; and I certainly brought up all the artillery under my command, to batter down the fortress and avert the reign of bank directors from being established (as frequently) in the United States. To extinguish the bank, was then a republican sine qua non; and the vote of members was judged by that standard of principle. Having republished the Speeches of Madison, Stone, Giles, &c. against the original incorporation 1791, I took such views of the subject as my judgment and conscience dictated; and, I confess, I thought the existence or duration of the republic connected with the question of renewal; nor is my opinion changed.

It all our means were honorable, as the end was laudable. Everything was open and fair, or, as a sailor might say, above board. One Senator had denied the right of instruction, and that heresy was exposed; another had indulged in unworthy invective against republican presses, insinuating that they could be purchased by a foreign power: and, this insult was the subject of refutation, by ridicule, and pasquinade. Some anti-bankers in this city had endeavored to show that one Senator was enlisted by interest with the bank; and this charge was construed by another to mean corruption: As if public prosperity was not the sum-total of private prosperity.

When the debate was drawing to a close; and party-feeling arose in proportion, like the thermometer by heat, two republican Senators informed me, (on enquiring the probable vote, and the strength of parties) that they were alarmed at the dubious hesitating conduct of a member (not of Kentucky) who had given each side reason to enroll him in their respective ranks! It was on this suggestion, that a couple of paragraphs were inserted in the Whig, directing the public eye towards that gentleman, but admonishing him of the slippery path into which the bank agents (then swarming on the spot) might wish to draw him, and admitting the readiness of censorious men to assign motives, &c. &c. The indiscriminating violence of one of the members of the Senate, proved that I had struck the proper string -although its vibration was not direct.

Yet, Messrs. Editors, I would not have revived the recollection of those times, since men do not act under high-wrought passions, or during an earthquake, as in their sober mood of tranquility, if unjust attempts were not made to convert merit into crime, and to perpetuate angry effusions, as matters of fact."