to that place and back again to Salem, when the seat of government was relocated there a few months later. As a party paper it was conducted with greater ability than any journal on the Pacific coast for a period of about a dozen years. Bush was assisted at various times by men of talent.... During the first eight years of its existence it was the ruling power in Oregon, wielding an influence that made and unmade officials at pleasure. 'The number of those who were connected with the paper as contributors to its columns, who have risen to distinguished positions, is reckoned by the dozen'." Asahel Bush later devoted "himself to banking, and as a member of the firm of Ladd and Bush added largely to his already considerable wealth."
The Oregonian, after announcing that the contents of the Statesman is a curiosity, and that "it has made war against the Spectator, Star, Oregonian, Secretary Hamilton and Gov. Gaines, and all others who has said aught against the acts of the late Legislative Assembly, or has not joined, etc.," devotes about a half column to a blustering lecture on personalities, and a whining complaint of having been attacked in that manner by the Statesman.
Complaints of this kind come with a special grace from a paper devoted from its first to its last number, almost exclusively, to the grossest personal abuse, the most foul mouthed slander, grovelling scurrility, falsehood and ribald blackguardism; insomuch that it has long since ceased to sustain any but a pot-house reputation, or to receive the countenance and respect of any party or community. Nothing that incurred the editor's displeasure has escaped. Business concerns, personal difficulties, public and private matters, have all alike been drawn through the slime and slander of his columns. And now he complains, and without reason too, of our employment of personalities, and whines over the matter like a whipped spaniel. He should learn to take blows before he ventures to give them. After showering his personal abuse and fish-market slang about him without stint, for months, he flies into a passion about a little newspaper squib, and makes an exhibition of himself that few men would be unashamed of. If the gentleman is not himself chagrined at his conduct, his friends are sorely so for him.
But the gentleman's shrewdness should have taught him
