Staunton Spectator

It will be remembered that, shortly after the Federal troops were withdrawn from this place we announced that we had been informed that W. J. Dews was engaged in getting signers to a secret petition praying that the troops be sent back to this place, and charging that "Union men were, otherwise , not safe. When asked by us if it were true, Dews denied it, and asserted that it was a petition to Congress for an entirely different purpose. The citizens of Staunton were justly indignant, and though they were anxious to see the petition, it was never made public, and they heard nothing more of it till Wednesday evening last, when the papers, containing the telegraphic notice of the proceedings of Congress of the day before, were received, when they found that Senator Trumbull had presented to the Senate of the United States a petition purporting to be a petition of "146 loyal citizens of Staunton" never signed it.--Clarity compels us to believe that the large majority of those who were inveigled into signing it were ignorant, simple-minded denizens of the brush who did not know the purport of the paper they were signing. We can forgive them for they knew not what they were doing. They were too ignorant to know that they were disgracing themselves, whilst slandering the citizens of Staunton, and the people of the county generally. We warned unsuspecting Union men at the same time against the nefarious designs of the author of the petition, and told them that he would make a catspaw of them to subserve his own selfish purposes. We stated that he wished to gain notoriety that he might be the recipient of a better office than the one he then held and disgraced. He has since been appointed Notary Public, and is now an applicant for still more important one, to wit: --Commissioner under the Civil Rights Bill.

Those who perpetrate such an abominable slander against any people as that contained in this petition against the citizens of Staunton, have an object to attain. Othello would say:

"I will be hanged if some eternal villain,

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devised this slander."

No greater evidence of the patience, forbearance an long suffering of the citizens of this community could be furnished than the fact that they have allowed a man to remain unmolested in their midst who has been engaged in secretly slandering them to the authorities who only need a pretext to increase the burden of oppression now unjustly heaped upon them. The last ounce of weight broke the camel's back.

There is a point beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. that point has been nearly reached, and it is time for some to heed the admonition. Justice will finally be done, old scores will be settled, and the "devil will get his Dews."