With regard to Mr. Young's receiving the pay of a Col. he never was charged with having done this during any extra session. That paper did insinuate that he at one time as aid to the governor received that pay. And it is hardly worth stopping to enquire whether he did or not, so long as we have his word that the Governor offered it to him, in consequence of which he agreed to serve. Whether he got the cash and gave a receipt for it;—or it was absorbed in his expences;—or laid it out to buy another press;—or yet remains due, is altogether immaterial, so long as an answer is substantially made out to a question raised by his good friends, and to which the public may expect a reply: The following certificate is therefore given without comment.
"I certify, that a day or two previous to Samuel Young's accompanying his excellency the Governor to New-York, in conversation with Mr. Young at his house, he informed me that while he was at Albany, from where he had but just returned, he called on his excellency, who then informed him of his intended expedition to New-York, and pressed him, Mr. Young to accompany him; that he objected, and said that he should be much pleased with the jaunt, but his business was such, as to render it impossible; that the Governor urged him still stronger, and he replied that he was wholly unprepared for leaving home any length of time, and the Governor calculated to go the next day or day but one—that the Governor told him if he would accompany him, he would make him an aid with the pay of a colonel, and bear his expences, and that he would defer going until the next steam boat; that he wished to take time to consider the Governor's proposals as he informed the Governor—and soon after told him he would accompany him.—SETH C. BALDWIN, Junior. Warren County, March 1816."
The Journal never charged Young with having informed Merrill that he "was not now Secretary, but should be to-morrow." At it again Merrill. Will you certify that you did not give a friendly hint to a gentleman who was going to Albany, that you had a connexion who would make an excellent clerk in the Secretary's office, and request his name to be given to Mr. Young, to whom Young replied, I am not now Secretary but shall be to-morrow? I believe an intimation to this effect was given in the Journal, which you blink with as much ingenuity as though you had been bred in the same school with Mr. Young's colleagues. Amongst the great number to whom Mr. Young did give the information that he was shortly to be Secretary, you, then it seems were omitted!
The facts disclosed in the following certificate, cannot fail to remind one of the fable of the "Country maid, and her milk pail."
"I hereby certify, that while riding in company with Samuel Young from Ballston to Albany, when going to the winter session of 1815, the day before the legislature met, the said Young informed me that he expected to be Secretary of State when the republican council should be chosen; that he could be a member of the legislature and Secretary of State at the same time, and could reside at the Springs or Ballstown in the summer, and do the business of Secretary in Albany by Deputy, and that these two offices would give him a pretty good living, or words to that effect.—JESUP RAYMOND. Ballston, April 1816."
"Green—let me consider; yes, green becomes my complexion best, and green it shall be."
Mr. Kasson, was early spoken of by the Independent American as an applicant for the Sheriff's office, and as it appeals, was afterwards a candidate for the county convention, and pledged to the support of Mr. Young. In consequence of this, the Journal did ask the question to Mr. Young, whether he intended Mr. Kasson as the Sheriff of this county?—and nothing more. I think a farther inquiry was made whether he was not authorised to purchase a "mansion house for the new secretary, in the village of Ballston Spa?" on which he preserves a cautious silence.
It is remarkable in this and other instances, with what industry The Citizen manufactures assertions to suit his own purpose, and then denies them. Having at length exhausted his fancy in fabricating, shaping and denying particular charges, hardly one of which ever existed, he ranges up his whole artillery of vengeance;—the battle becomes general:—And the famous Doctor Slop, the man midwife, did not pour a more copious and continued shower of curses upon Obadiah, who had tied his bag of instruments with hard knots, than is thus suddenly let fly upon the devoted head of the Editor of the Saratoga Journal. "Really" said the Frenchman to an old woman who had been storming and fretting at Napoleon, "the Emperor, my master would feel himself infinitely grieved, if he knew how hard your lady-ship thought of him."
But it seems the Editor of the Journal "has indulged himself in a course of low and vulgar sarcasms," tho' no particular instance is pointed out. Thus the citizen, after sending his friend, Mr. Elias Benedict, into the bar-room, to certify the damns and god damns of Mr. Wilkins, suddenly becomes extremely modest and refined, and falls to moralizing like Michael Cassio, after his own drunken fit is over. Mr. Bunce might really be esteemed far gone, had he reached the climax of vulgarity which distinguishes the citizen and his book.
But says the book in another place, "the manners of Mr. Bunce are coarse and vulgar." I suppose an immediate allusion is here intended to the manner in which he treated Stillwell and Thompson's supercilious proposition to agree to print their famous history of the McBain Meeting, without reading it, under penalty of losing the first Judge's patronage in case of a refusal. Perhaps they mean that he did not on that occasion, turn out his toes exactly as he ought; or make a becoming bow to so much mock consequence as surrounded them. I know not in what language to describe their notions. We have already admitted that Mr. Bunce does not pretend to vie in purity of dialect with the certificate of Mr. Elias Benedict. Suppose we also admit that he cannot hold competition with Roe as a profound linguist—with Mr. Thompson in fairness, high mindedness, openness and candor—nor with Mr. Linnendoll in belleslettres—and that he would not make so good a dancing master as Mr James Merrill[6] and leave the public to judge whether coming short of these qualifications, he can be any way tolerable in his person or polished in his conversation.