The Last Word from the Dispatch: A Veteran Editor’s Farewell and a New Era Begins

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1876.

VALEDICTORY. This issue closes our connection with the Dispatch, both as editor and proprietor. Other business engagements, more suitable to our declining years and consequent yearning for more quiet pursuits, have occupied our time and attention principally for the past year and a half, during which time we have only held the newspaper subject to any arrangement which might offer, that would not conflict with the objects which we have kept steadily in view, and to which we have bent our best energies for the past five years, viz: the promotion of the growth and prosperity of Seattle, especially, and Washington Territory generally.

It is a cause of special gratification to us and congratulation to the public, that in Mr. Thomas B. Merry we have a successor who has no peer in Washington Territory, and no superior on the Pacific Coast, as a general newspaper editor. In the full vigor of matured manhood, he brings to this work all the elements which command success in journalism, and especially those best adapted to the vitalization of the energies and enterprises upon which the future greatness of this community depend: large and varied experience as a journalist upon this coast, a vigorous constitution, untiring industry, a noble enthusiasm in his profession, generous sympathies with the people, rare social qualities, and an active interest in every object and enterprise calculated to promote the general prosperity of the community, with a graceful and attractive style of expressing his thoughts, which is always pleasing and rarely offensive to the most critical tastes.

Mr. Merry proposes to identify the DISPATCH with the Democratic party. To the party character of the paper we attach no material importance, as there are no vital political questions at issue in a Territorial election. These party conflicts occur at intervals of two years last only through a few weeks, and need not at all interfere with or influence the usefulness of a newspaper devoted mainly to the public interests.

We most heartily and earnestly commend the DISPATCH to the support of all those who are interested in the public welfare, confidently believing that under the management of Mr. Merry it will reflect honor and only honor upon this city and this Territory.

After over forty years service as a newspaper editor, this is probably our final editorial valedictory. In reviewing this long career as a journalist, with its varied fortunes of success and vicissitude, we find nothing in our past acts to regret, nothing to take back, no position ever taken under the promise of reward, or abandoned under the influence of fear. We never espoused a cause or abandoned a measure which we did not believe to be right in principle, and what were then matters of opinion are now convictions, cherished as settled principles, confirmed by the experiences of a lifetime.

Our positions have been often misunderstood and as often misrepresented, subjecting us, in times of excitement, to popular odium and persecution from those who did not, or would not, comprehend the motives which prompted our course. All that is now passed, and our ceremony calls up no act or utterance of ours betraying a want of fidelity to our country, to society or to our fellows. We have made enemies, at times bitter and unrelenting. All that is now passed, leaving no bitterness or resentment to plague us in the quiet walks of life, while the memory of the many and devoted friends which we have had live in perpetual bloom shedding a sweet fragrance around us in our declining years.

The past five years have been the most quiet and uneventful of all the years of our public life, and though not entirely free from strife and turmoil have given us no cause to regret our choice of a place in which to spend our last years of life. As a private citizen, occupying only a subordinate position, we shall not cease to take an active interest in all that pertains to our common good, independent, as heretofore, of all party considerations.

WEBIAE BROWN [sic]

TO OUR READERS. We have never been much of a believer in personal editorials; but the custom of a salutatory has hitherto obtained here and is naturally expected by the readers of a newspaper on occasions of this kind, when a new hand grasps the quill. As we have no end of labor ahead of us, this introduction of ourselves to the supporters of the DISPATCH, must necessarily be brief. We have come here to labor, and have but little time to talk.

Concerning the future course of this paper, we have only to say that it will be conducted in a spirit of fairness to all contemporaries. Politically, it will give its adherence to the cause of Democracy and civil reform; but political questions will be secondary considerations, save at the recurrence of the biennial elections. Not being a chronic aspirant for office, we are content to pursue a business in which we have had some twelve years’ experience in California and Oregon.

The principal mission of a frontier journal is, to set forth the industries and resources of the country; and to labor to invite immigration, that capital may follow in its wake. This shall be the chief aim of the DISPATCH, and, by steadfastly laboring with that end in view, we hope to earn the approval of friends and the silent respect of those whom honesty of sentiment has constituted our antagonists.

To nearly nine-tenths of our supporters we are personally an entire stranger, hence we fear we shall trespass upon their good nature in many instances. But everything has to have a beginning, and we see no better place to commence the life of a territorial editor than at Seattle. We will be found an advocate of progress at all times, and should the issue ever come to a direct contest between the people and the corporations, we will be content to rise or fall with the people. The people are always honest, generally right and never unpopular.

So we plow along, like the fly on the shoulder of the ox. There is plenty of work ahead of us and, we believe, a fair remuneration for an industrious journalist. At least, we have settled here to give the experiment an impartial test.