Page:History of the newspapers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania.djvu/162

This page needs to be proofread.

132 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY PAPERS. suasions, feeling somewhat awkward in our new position — or rather in the resumption of the old relation — but when the harness becomes a little better adjusted, we expect to jog' along quietly and unassumingly as becomes a well- behaved rural editor. We expect to encroach upon no rights belonging to others. We shall look neither to the right nor the left, but pursuing a straight-forward, in- dependent course, expressing our opinions fairly, fully, fearlessly, on all questions of public interest — sounding the alarm to our party friends, when there is danger ahead, and exposing that which ought to be exposed, whether fomid in high places or in low, whether in our own or in. the opposite political organization. When we have occasion to differ with our editorial brethren, as we doubtless often will, we expect to do so in the right spirit, and in the use of decorous language. With then, this partial renewal of old acquaintanceship, we fall into line, and are ready to use and be used as in times past." The failure to find a file of the "Times" renders it now impossible to reproduce more of the strong editorials that Mr. Weyand wrote and published. He was an im- compromising Republican, of the independent stripe, sound to the core on the questions of protection, the party's financial policy, internal improvements, and what- ever would benefit local interests. The paper was morally clean, and was a good example of the best quality of country journalism, and it was a welcome visitor to hundreds of good homes in the county. In all his long career he never had a libel suit, though he made scores and hundreds of persons writhe under his denunciations and criticisms. He was threatened with libel suits, and the sword of vengeance was held over his editorial head a number of times, but no action was ever taken to put him on trial. He had bitter controversies with many of the most prominent men of the county, and especially in the Know