n object in the
agonies of dissolution, or a maniac dancing in his chains. This
production should have been left to the oblivion which inevitably
awaits it, nor should my pen have been employed in its detection and
exposure, had it not been characterized by the lowest attempts at
concealment and treachery, falsehood and detraction.--Like _Iago_ in
the play, a wretched abandonment of character, a destitution of
principle, and a fiend-like thirst for _revenge_, accompany the author
thro' the whole of his progress, and appear to acquire additional
force, as he approaches the period of his downfall. That it is a
tissue, however, which it requires no strength to burst, will appear by
the examination of a single point on which the whole of the story is
made to rest. If the ridiculous charge made against two or three
individuals that they had cheated Mr. Young out of his nomination,
turns out to be the mere phantom of a disordered imagination, instead
of a logical deduction of truth, if the facts which have been urged in
support of this charge, are the mere creatures of misrepresentation,
prevarication and falsehood; this alone will settle the controversy,
and fix the imputation, upon its unprincipled authors. The loop on
which this absurd tale is made to hang, is the _frail and feeble_
certificate of Ketcham, Gardner and Cowles. That I should be authorised
to apply an epithet more severe than that of frail and feeble, I take
it upon me to prove in the first place by the certificate itself,
compared with one which the same men issued last spring: And in the
next place by a plain statement of facts, given under the solemnity of
an oath, leaving it at present for _atheists_ and blasphemers, (for I
am sure none others will) to ascribe greater moral certainty to a
certificate carrying on the face of it miserable evasion, than to a
history sanctioned by an appeal to the Christians God.

That this certificate is both suspicious and evasive, I appeal to the
pamphlet page 27. Why do they not tell their fellow-citizens, that
_they did not collectively or individually during that session charge
Young with ill-treatment towards them_? Would not this have been
perfectly easy if true? Why do they blink the question, and tell a long
story about a conversation which they held with Mr. Bunce, which
whether it was true or untrue, is totally immaterial? What do they mean
in a later stage of their certificate, by the _unsuspecting and_
_unguard