In this, with three insolvent advertisements staring him in the face from the Independent American, the judge denies, or sanctions a denial, that he ever ordered an advertisement to be printed in that paper at all. Unblushing impudence indeed!—Thus to ask the public to pervert the eternal principles of truth and justice by giving credit to such assertions as these.
The examination of a few more topics under this head shall suffice.—Indeed amongst the disgusting details of falsehood and meanness with which that production abounds; you find many remarks imputed to the Journal which it never made, while those which it has made, on examination will be found strictly true.
The writer of that pamphlet is guilty of falsehood in asserting that the editorial remarks of the Journal are not copied into other papers. Not to mention others, they have been copied the year past in several instances, by the National Intelligencer at Washington, and by Niles' Weekly Register at Baltimore, two of the ablest papers in the Union. The remarks which the book falsely calls a scurrilous attack upon the Governor, instead of being an attack on him, it so happens that they were merely calculated to let the public know what every republican had a right to expect, and which they in fact realized from our worthy chief magistrate in the season of peril which dictated them.—They were such as he would himself approve, while he would frown contemptuously on the little fry who attempt so base a slander in his name. Would to God the conduct of some of the governor's fawning and pretended admirers could endure investigation like that of this great and good man—the pride and ornament of his country!
As to the charge against the Journal for asserting that the first judge and others had combined to domineer and rule the people of this county, you already have a taste of the judge's fondness for domineering over some of the people, and over their press; and that other persons named have acted in concert with him is equally true and notorious;—And it is hardly necessary to enquire whether they combined for the purpose, or instinctively assembled like birds of the same feather, from a common spirit of domination. It is false, however, that the Journal ever made such a charge. This and a number of these remarks are only suffering them to wear a coat which they themselves have cut out of whole cloth, and which seems to fit them so exactly. That paper never charged Mr. Young with any management or compromise with the federalists, further than what justly resulted from his being chosen supervisor in Ballston by federalists, contrary to the regular town nomination, and his afterwards being complimented by the federal paper as a modern political Luther, on account of his having quit his own party in that town and submitted to federal policy, not denied by the book—from his having aided in the election of the federal candidate for Congress in the fall of 1812; and from his "at least" conniving at federal aid, in the spring of 1815—all of which are facts of too general notoriety to be denied.
But the Journal did charge some of Mr. Young's friends with a political understanding between them and the federalists, which is not only passed over in silence by the book, but proved by the foregoing estimates and certificates.
On seeing Mr. Young supporting, and supported in his turn by a Senator or Senators of this state for office, the Journal did ask the question, whether it was pursuant to an arrangement on the subject between them? This question was put in the Journal directly to Mr. Young—taking it for granted that Mr. Young has adopted the language in the book on this question as his own, this might be received as an answer, had not a mere question been first perverted into a charge.
The Journal did also ask him the question, whether he intended to make one Joel Lee, clerk of this county? To which the book, replies that he never promised any office to any man whatever. It is perhaps necessary, in justice to the Editor of the Journal, to introduce the following certificate, and leave this part of the subject without farther comment.
"I hereby certify, that shortly after the appointment of Wm. Stillwell, as a clerk, of this county, I was in the city of Albany, and conversed with Mr. Young on the subject of that appointment, in which conversation I expressed my surprise at his appointment, to which Mr. Young replied, it was not his fault, that there was a petition for him from some of the most respectable men in the county, and it would not do for him to oppose it, but that his mind was the strongest on Joel Lee for that office.—ELI BEARDSLEE. Milton, March 1816."
Among others to whom Lee admitted he had been promised of offered the Clerk's office by Young, is Mr. Nicholas Smith, but it is thought unnecessary to multiply certificates on this head.
The writer of that pamphlet also displays his characteristic ignorance, or stupid disregard to truth, when he says that the Journal ever charged Young with receiving pay in three capacities, during the extra session of 1815. It never made the charge as it respected that, or any other year;—but it so happens that during the extra, session of 1814, Mr. Young did receive $5 per day, which was the pay for a member of the house, and $2.25 per day, which was the extra allowance on account of his being speaker. See New Revised Laws, Vol. I. p. 528, and the act of April 18th 1815, called the supply bill, Sec. 15, by which two acts, the wages of the Assembly are fixed at $5, and those of the speaker at $7.25, and extended to the extra session of 1814. Altho' the Journal never made the charge imputed to it, yet you see how easily and conclusively that charge might have been supported, had the assertion ever been made.