Franklin Repository

The annals of decent journalism cannot furnish a parrallel [sic] for the mingled imbecility and malice with which the Spirit of last week assails Col. McClure. He is not in nomination for any public position--our party has as yet presented no candidate for the suffrages of the people--nor is he traversing the County asking to be made the candidate. If he should be presented to the voters of the county as our candidate for any responsible trust--as the Spirit seems to fear will be the case--it will be because our party desires him to be one of its standard bearers, and not because he has gone from one section of the County to another, as is usual with candidates, seeking the honors his political friends have to confer. He is a private citizen--pursuing his private calling--offending none, either personally or politically; and yet he is singled out by the Spirit for a torrent of personal malignity unapproached by any other partisan journal within our recollection. Had he been assailed politically, however unwarranted at this time, there might be some excuse for this act; but when he is assailed by cowardly innuendoes, as but a living mass of corruption, and as fit only for a felon's doom, the community is justly startled at the freedom with which the moral assassin seems to think his fiendish calling may be practiced with impunity.

We have never known such a feeling of condemnation to pervade this community as has been aroused by the flood of libels poured upon Col. McClure by that paper. Our citizens, as with one voice, both political friends and foes of Col. McClure, have spoken out in terms of fearless disapprobation. The leading men of the Democratic party have disavowed all responsibility for the unscrupulous libeler of the Spirit, and wash their hands of the indelible stain it would fasten upon their party, if endorsed by its good men.

Independent of the impolicy of such a malicious system of personal warfare upon one who has enjoyed the most decisive evidences of the confidence of the people, there are few men in the Democratic party whose sense of justice would not revolt at such infamous assaults upon the private character of any man; for that sense of the proprieties and common decencies of life is instinctive in the human breast, and can only fail to assert its power when the most fiendish depravity destroys every honest emotion of the soul. Such assaults, hurled upon a community where respect for personal reputation is proverbial, fall harmless at the feet of the intended victim, and recoil with terrible force upon those who aim them. They unite all citizens as one common brotherhood, as they would unite to guard against pestilence, to vindicate the object of the libeler's venom; because none is safe from his pestiferous breath.

We do not defend Col. McClure--he needs no defense in this community, where he is best known, and where he is appreciated as an honest, upright, liberal and useful citizen, and as a fearless but honorable politician. It is but just alike to himself and many ardent friends, however, to say, that he has now in his possession the most conclusive evidence of the utter falsity of the cowardly libels heaped upon him by the Spirit, and that he will promptly and unequivocally vindicate himself in a manner that will fully justify the confidence of his friends and command the respect of even his defamers.

We annex the following article from Forney's Press of yesterday:

The absence of personalities in the most of the newspapers published in Pennsylvania is one of the healthy signs of the times. Not many years ago most of our interior journals were occupied in great part by violent assaults upon the public men of their respective vicinities. We are glad to notice that a wholesome public opinion has cured this evil, and that although the divisions between great parties continue as strongly as ever, there is an active rivalry among editors to maintain courteous and kindly relations.

There are, it is true, exceptions to this rule, but they are as odious as they are rare. One of these exceptions we notice in a paper printed at Chambersburg, called the Valley Spirit--a late number of which contains a coarse and passionate attack upon Col A. K. McClure, late a representative in the Legislature for Franklin Co.

We are not of Col. McClure's party, and therefore do not speak of him from political affinity; but a somewhat intimate knowledge of his character, and a somewhat close observation of his course as a public man, impel us to declare that we wish Pennsylvania could boast of more such patriotic and public-spirited citizens. Bold in the expression of his opinions, and therefore well calculated to provoke enmity on the part of those who may be adverse to him, we do not know where there is to be found one in whom public trust can be more safely reposed, and who would go farther to sacrifice himself for the interests of his constituents. The idea that such a man could be guilty of anything mercenary or corrupt is an absurdity.

We have watched his career with some interest, and believe that if there is a true hearted Pennsylvanian and good citizen anywhere, that man is Col. A. K. McClure, of Franklin county.

An old gentleman by the name of John Steake, who resides near Keefer's Store, in Letterkenny township and who is aged seventy one years, was engaged doing his days work in the hay field, last week, and not only keeping up with, but pushing, the stoutest hands in the field. He has worked through the entire hay and grain harvest every year for fifty five years successively, and expects to cradle through the present harvest with as much buoyancy of spirit, if not quite as much bodily strength, as he did half a century ago. This is what may well be called "a green old age."

We clip from the Spirit, of the 29th ult., the above. To which a friend, and neighbor of Mr. S., requests us to add: that the gentleman named by our contemporary fought under General Scott at Chippawa, and Lundy's Lane, and was, for one month an adjutant under Scott. But the best remains to be told. He has been a first rate Whig all his life and never soiled his ticket with a locofoco name.