I can not, however, bring myself to doubt that your remarks upon the whole were meant to do the Messenger a service and that you regard it with the most friendly feelings in the world.
Respectfully,
Courier and Compiler's Rejoinder.
[Sept. 2, 1836. Richmond Courier and Daily Compiler.]
Gallaher and Davis.
(a.) The idea that "injury" may accrue to the Messenger from what we have said may have arisen from the "jealous attention" above alluded to, but we doubt whether the public will concur in the opinion. At all events, we can not appreciate that sort of jealousy which deems it proper to defend "reputation" for such slight causes.
(b.) We should have thought a critical eye would have observed that this was a mere typographical error. We did not mean to assume the editor had already obtained "a character for regular cutting and slashing." We only warned him against that unenviable sort of reputation. He has chosen to transpose our words and use the word "indiscriminate," which makes us say what we did not say. There is surely a vast difference in the import of the terms. "Regular" dissection might be just and proper, from the nature of the subjects reviewed; but "indiscriminate" would imply the indulgence of a savage propensity in all cases whatsoever. The enumeration, therefore, of the cases in which praise predominated was scarcely necessary to a defence, because this defence is "adduced" against a charge which was never made by us. The admission that the reviews of three works were "harshly condemnatory" is enough of itself to justify the warning which we had the temerity to utter; and the further avowal that Col. Stone's "Ups and Downs" was "unexceptionably condemned" would sustain the idea that the laudation ad nauseam of the "rigid justice and impartiality" of the editor was not entirely merited. No perfectly dispassionate mind can assent to
