duty it was to protect the press &c. &c.--and it was after much
persuasion, and partly through my own importunities, that he was
induced to print it.

"Mr. Bunce's conduct through the whole transaction, which
must have lasted two hours or more, was _consistent, firm_
and _independent_ to my conception, as was the others
_haughty_, _supercilious_ and _overbearing_.--Lyman B.
Langworthy. _March, 1816_."

Here fellow citizens is the _iron club of power_ held over the head of
an editor of a _free press_, during an election--to coerce him and his
press into obedience to their dictates. What are we coming to when men
high in office use their offices, influence and patronage to control
the freedom of the press, which all the champions of freedom esteem the
organ and safeguard of our _liberties_--and attempt to compell it to
bend to their purposes--to sell itself and rush _blind fold_ on any
measure their interest or ambition may dictate?

The independent conduct of Mr. Bunce on this occasion was probably one
reason among _others_ why the judge aided in the introduction of
another printer of the more _pliant sort_; who would more readily bend
to his purposes and serve as a pipe with which his friends Roe,
Thompson, Stillwell &c. could spit their venom thro' the county in the
more permanent form of a _pamphlet_.

In this, with _three_ insolvent advertisements staring him in the face
from the _Independent American_, the judge denies, or sanctions a
denial, that he ever ordered an advertisement to be printed in that
paper _at all_. Unblushing impudence indeed!--Thus to ask the public to