The State Rights Democrat

HONESTY—IN THE FORKS.

Editors Democrat:

I propose to review the letter in the Register, on "Jones the Disorganizer."

I do this in the interest of truth, and I assure my friends that I did not write that letter. Of course the signature would naturally lead the public to suppose that I wrote it. The cunning rascal who did write it, evidently intended to convey the impression that I was the author by putting that signature to it.

That letter is a falsehood upon its face, and I consider that an objection to it. The first few lines of it convey the idea that it was written by a number of persons, for it uses the expression: "we as life-long Democrats." Less than half a dozen lines further along the writer forgets himself, drops the plural "we" and says: "I," and further still, "I am credibly informed;" and, to this singular form he sticks to the end. The writer bases his statements upon hearsay. He has no better authority than: "I am credibly informed," "I was informed by a prominent Democrat," "I am told.— Now who informed him? If there are charges against Mr. Jones, we want to hear the testimony from the witnesses themselves. We don't propose to take it after it has been filtered through some unknown individual and then retailed through the columns of a Radical newspaper. I do not admit that Jones did what the letter accuses him of; but suppose he did, what do you make of it? It says that he came out six weeks before the Convention for Clerk; that he withdrew; that he said there would be a good many candidates; that he got the nomination for Recorder, in the City of Albany; that Hill asked him if he was on the track and was answered in the negative; that he was sprung at the eleventh hour, and that the order of business was arranged so that Clerk came last. What does all that dawdling nonsense amount to? It is a high compliment to Jones, when a man who is evidently an unscrupulous and vindictive enemy can't find anything worse than all this to say about him. He had a right to be a candidate for Clerk six weeks before the Convention, and was. He withdrew as he had a right to. He did perhaps say that there would be a good many candidates, and that some of them would get beat. I think there was a good deal of sense in the remark. I think the man who wrote that letter is probably satisfied by this time that somebody did get beat, and I think that is just what is the matter with Hannah. Suppose he was sprung at the eleventh hour, after telling Hill that he was not on the track. Go to the men who sprung him, and hold them to account, if a monstrous crime has been committed. If Jones connived for that result, he must have connived with somebody in the Convention.— Now who was it? Show me a single man of that Convention that he asked to vote or work for him? Who helped him to carry out the so-called trickery in the Convention? Name them. Name one. Was it Mr. W. M. Smith, who placed Jones' name before the Convention? There is not a more upright Democrat than Smith. To say that any man on the ticket got his nomination by fraud is to accuse a majority of the Convention of being either ignorant or dishonest.

Now, I believe that Mr. Jones was placed on that ticket in accordance with the unbiased wishes of a majority of the Convention: and I believe that that Convention had a right to select just who it pleased and that no set of candidates had any right to dicker one another out of the way so as to deprive the Convention of its choice.

I must say that I never saw such rambling nonsense in print as that published in so-called Honesty's letter. It is a very plain case of an attempt by a man to write a fellow down a knave and of the writer getting himself down an ass instead. A man who could so magnify such things as those stated in that letter, even supposing them to be true, could very easily mistake a plum pudding for a torpedo.

There is one thing that I think I can assure Honesty, (so-called) of, and that is this: that I think it less culpable for a Democrat to work for his own nomination before a Democratic Convention than to attempt, after getting slaughtered in his own party, to stock a Republican Convention. And I ask Honesty, (so-called), what he has to say of a Democrat who will come to Albany, on the occasion of a Republican Convention, and send into a caucus of that Convention a proposal to combine with them on this proposition: They to nominate two Williams' Democrats (where was he to find them?) for the Legislature and leave the offices of Clerk and Sheriff blank so that he and a confrere could run, representing that there were seventy-five Democrats in the Forks of the Santiam who would bolt? What do you think of such a man? What have you to say of a man who would urge Mr. Jones to run for county Judge, insisting that he was a very proper man, and then talk as Honesty, (so-called) talks because he was nominated for Clerk? What have you to say of his duplicity, veracity and cheek?

I do not believe that there are any life-long Democrats who endorse Honesty, (so-called). They don't do that way. They have too much every day sense to endorse such nonsensical letters and too much patriotism to engage in such treachery. That may do for the bread-and-butter hunting and the center-table getting Democrats—the fellows that got lachrymose when Lincoln died—but it won't wash with the life-longers. And while I think of it, I must say that I think the writer of the Register letter has taken the responsibility of forging another man's name to that letter. I must also congratulate the Republicans on their recruits. They haven't exactly got "the man on horseback," but they have undoubtedly got "the man in the Forks." and they have got his right bower with the remnant of his $600 worth of long-handled shovels—which two circumstances entitle him to be considered a genuine "jack of spades;" and they have, in addition to any quantity of negroes, got San Wa and Calapooya Pete.

All of which is very respectfully submitted.

R. M. Powers.

Their conduct, indeed, in this particular, warrants belief in the report we heard while in Salem last week—that the old Salem band of Democrats (so called) were actively but furtively trading other candidates on the State ticket for the promise of votes for Grover, and that Slater, for Congress, and Patterson, for State Printer, were the two who were offered in sacrifice for Mr. Grover's benefit.—Commercial.

We suppose that we ought to be really grateful for the manifestations of disinterested interest in the concerns of the Democratic party that we find in O'Meara's paper. But, really, we can't afford it. The very ingenious and dextrous editor has our admiration, though. His tactics do him honor. By such insidious means he may succeed in dividing the Democratic party as easily as Archimedes might have succeeded in giving the earth a tilt—only in this case, as in that, the parties haven't got the necessary footing.