of justice, and
before grand jurors, in the way of annoying those they have neither the
_manliness_ nor _courage_ to call to an account upon their own hooks!

The established usage of _gentlemen_, when offended by a newspaper
editor, is to exact personal satisfaction. To acknowledge that you are
personally aggrieved, and then to retort in tricks behind the offender's
back, or words behind your privileges at the Bar, is to acknowledge that
one is either a _fool_ or a _coward_--perhaps both. A chief object in
this crusade against us is to gag us during this campaign, and kill us
off from the stump and the press; but they have certainly studied our
character to but little purpose. And whatever line of policy their
prompters and associates of the Locofoco school may urge upon them, let
them be assured that they cannot muzzle criticism of their personal or
political delinquencies. It is a sacred duty to unmask the _renegade_,
to expose the _traitor_, and to hold up the _demagogue_ to public
reprobation. That duty will be performed freely and fearlessly, by the
author of this work, come weal or come woe. If these two "Knights of the
Rueful Countenance" kill and eat a dozen Know Nothings, we know one
member of the Order they will not affright into silence. For their
cowardly assaults and their officious intermeddlings they may bare their
backs to the lash. We will be with them to the bitter end, and will only
forsake them in the _Gethsemane_ of their retreat!

Had we come here with press and type, in 1849, and agreed to be
controlled by these men and their particular friends, we could have been
_the_ man for the times. Had we stooped to flirt and coquette and fawn
and dance around these men, we could have had their endorsement, their
influence, and their money, to any reasonable extent. But we neither
sought their friendship, nor coveted their adulations. We claim to have
been made of such inflexible materials, as not readily to go through the
transmutations necessary to secure the kind regards of these men. We are
no office-seeker, and desire no reward beyond the consciousness of
having performed our duty, and of having served our country to the best
of our ability.

We take this occasion to repeat what we have heretofore said in our
journal, that nearly every prominent man in the country, calling himself
an "Old Line Whig," and now opposed to Fillmore and Donelson, is
influenced by personal grievances, or a desire to get