The views of the rival political parties were echoed with startling frankness in the columns of the _Tree of Liberty_ and the _Pittsburgh Gazette_. On October 11, 1800, the _Tree of Liberty_ announced the election of the Republican candidate for inspector of elections in the borough, and added jubilantly: “The people are no longer to be led up like tame asses to vote against their inclination for the characters that Ross, Woods, and Addison recommend. They now act for themselves.” After the presidential election of 1800, it exulted further: “It is laughable to hear some of the hot-blooded Federalists moaning and groaning at the result of the last election. They know not what cause to attribute it to. They curse the _Tree_ and all its leaves, they denounce ‘Clapboard Row’ with the yards and its size sticks.”[229] The _Pittsburgh Gazette_ was equally outspoken, its ire being particularly directed against Judge Hugh Henry Brackenridge. In an article signed “A Citizen of Washington,” it gave what purported to be an account of a drunken escapade of the Judge through Washington and Allegheny Counties, which, if published to-day, would lead to a personal encounter.[230] On another occasion Scull paid his compliments to Brackenridge in the following sarcastic terms: “You who get two or three thousand dollars a year for setting up a slanderous press, and for two or three journeys through the State to sit as a mute on the bench, and wear the new cockade, in your drunken frolics through the country, can afford to buy a press and hire types, and pay under-devils to set types and fetch and carry tales. I cannot afford such things. I have no salary, post, or pension.”[231] A week later Scull attacked Brackenridge with even more virulence: “Mr. Brackenridge cannot expect to live long. He has already outlived all hope of fame. I doubt whether he feels that there is a God above him. I doubt whether he does not think that he is his own divinity while he lives, and that when he dies his dust will mingle with that of the beasts that perish. He has labored with industry and success to acquire the contempt and abhorrence of all whom it was possible for him to esteem.”[232] REFERENCES CHAPTER VI [174] _Tree of Liberty_, August 23, 1800. [175] _Tree of Liberty_, August 23, 1800. [176] H. H. BRACKENRIDGE. _Incidents of the Insurrection in the Western Parts of Pennsylvania_, Philadelphia, 1795, vol. ii., pp. 73–74. [177] H. H. BRACKENRIDGE. _Incidents of the Insurrection in the Western Parts of Pennsylvania_, Philadelphia, 1795, vol. ii., p. 72. [178] _Pittsburgh Gazette_, November 16, 1793. [179] _Pittsburgh Gazette_, June 28, 1794. [180] H. H. BRACKENRIDGE. _Incidents of the Insurrection in the Western Parts of Pennsylvania_, Philadelphia, 1795, vol. ii. p. 61. [181] DANIEL AGNEW. _Address Delivered before the Allegheny County Bar Association_, December 1, 1888, p. 14. [182] _Loomis’s Magazine Almanac_ for 1835, Pittsburgh, pp. 37–40.