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TO THE REPUBLICANS OF THE COUNTY OF SARATOGA.
Fellow-Citizens.
The pamphlet signed "A Citizen," and entitled "A defence," &c. generally known by the name of "The Book," has at length made its appearance; and as was expected, this last effort of an expiring faction, has excited no other emotions in the mind of an enlightened public, than those of contempt and pity—Contempt for the miserable arts of condign despair, and pity like that excited by an 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 unguarded conversation, they had held with Mr. Bunce, and which they were afraid he would make mischief of? Do they call the conversation which they detail an unguarded one?...