THE REPORTER.
"'TIS PLEASANT, THROUGH THE LOOP-HOLES OF RETREAT, TO PEEP AT SUCH A WORLD-- TO SEE THE STIR OF THE GREAT BABEL, AND NOT FEEL THE CROWD."
[NEW SERIES----VOL. I.]	WASHINGTON, (PA.) MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17th, 1821.	[NO. 17.

      FELLOW-CITZENS,

      THE controversy between myself and others respecting the propriety of coercing a certain portion of the community to pay a feigned regard to certain precepts of christianity has occupied your attention for some considerable time past. In the management of this controversy you have not been well treated. Instead of an argumentative & rational discussion, your patience has been exhausted and you have become disgusted with a continual strife about character, with a series of lampoons, sarcasms, ironies, jests; and in some instances with the lowest scurrilities, billingsgate rhetoric, and even the obscenities of hell. These things ought not so to be. They neither improve your morals, enlighten your understanding, nor cultivate your taste. The example which this controversy has afforded is an exceeding bad one. The object of my opponents from first to last has been to impeach my character and to sully my reputation; as if all conscious that their cause could not be defended, as if their only means of supporting it was the destruction and ruin of my reputation. Mr. Timothy the last of my opponents has just finished the grand climax of that slander, scurrility and detraction, for which he seems to have been better qualified than most of his predecessors, in his three last No's,¹ especially in the poem which he wrote in the name & on the behalf of "the devil."² That any member of the community should descend to such vile abuse is to be lamented, but that a professed minister of the gospel of peace and benevolence should descend to write such scurrility in the name of "the devil" is deeply to be deplored. I was led, I was compelled, I was driven to the necessity of replying to some of those foul insinuations, and did not perhaps keep within the bounds and limits which I ought strictly to have observed. This aberration from strict propriety I readily acknowledge. My first No predicated upon information received from citizens in the vicinity of West- Middletown concerning outrages of certain members of the Moral Society was perhaps too keen: but when I entered the lists with mr. T. it was to reason on the principle and expediency of such laws and associations, not to act either the part of a satirist or to descend to the vulgarities of boatmen, of fish women, and the vulgar blackguardism of Newgate. I had resolved that my 17th No. should close my essays on this subject; but the three No's since published by T. so transcended all the bounds and limits of reason truth and decorum, as to call me forth again; not indeed to render railing and scurrility, for railing and scurrility but for purposes which will be evident in the sequel. From the specimens mr. T. has afforded in his latter No's and in his pieces published some three or four years ago against his reverend christian brethren mr. S. R----n and mr. M. B----n I am sure the victory would be his. I acknowledge my inferiority to him in that rare talent of browbeating, lampooning & scurrilous invective. I will give him all the honor due to his eminent abilities in this department. As to his character and mine it is nothing to the public in this controversy. What we write or have written on subjects of a general nature affecting the community is all that concerns them. Nor will my remarks on his character affect the public mind; neither will his remarks on mine. We have both our friends and our enemies who will judge from other documents. Newspapers are uncertain means of information, respecting public characters who may come into competition or contact. Were we to have judged from the Pennsylvania newspapers previous to the late election for governor we would have tho't that Pennsylvania could not have pitched upon two worse men in the state either as to moral character or personal talents.

      I should suppose that mr. T's sources of detraction, slander, &c. are now pretty well dried up, or exhausted if they are not infinite, and as it will neither be profitable for you, nor necessary for me, nor compatible with my feelings as a christian to reply to them, I give him all the contents of his three last numbers as "clear gain" and shall suffer them to die a natural death, I except any thing of a resemblance to argument, such as when he speaks of seven arguments, &c. If there is any charge or insinuation in his three last numbers that might be supposed worthy of a reply on account of its weight I wish to inform you that I conceive the man who wrote the aforesaid poem deserves no reply, in any thing that he might say, for the purpose of injuring the character of his opponent. And, secondly, any person desirous of detecting his misrepresentations can easily do it by refering to his numbers and mine.

      As he has very prudently, yet with a sneer, that is designed to conceal his cowardice, declined meeting me in a public debate on the subject;³ and as you have been weared out with strife of words, to no profit, as far as mr. T. could divert us from the subject of discussion, I design as follows, viz:

      1st. To publish a new series of numbers. The accompanying one⁴ shall be a fair specimen of the style that will be pursued.

      2d. Mr. Sample, the editor of the "Reporter" having refused to continue the controversy any longer on its former footing, I have contracted for one column of his paper to be at my disposal for a year, a half year, or a quarter, just as the case may require, therefore I shall publish one column per week, or one number one column long.

      3d. That no provocation, no not even if mr. T. should call me a fool, lunatic, madman, ignoramus, liar or even say I stole a horse, or killed somebody, I shall never disgrace myself by descending to retort or reply to him in kind. I will seek redress in another way.

      4th. There shall not be one of my succeeding numbers that might not be read on the first day of the week, that is, provided the Westminster confession of faith, or Bunyans Holy War might be read on the first day of the week.

      5th. My succeeding numbers shall contain things new and old upon this subject, and not one sentiment shall be inculcated that will not be subservient to good morals, good order and the wisest policy.

[The Reporter, 17 September 1821, p. 4.]