Martinsburgh Gazette

The Gazette.
Martinsburgh, Feb. 22.

Our readers will see under the head of "Philadelphia, Feb. 13th" the latest intelligence from France, viz. to the 23d ult. The French government, it seems, still perseveres in the iniquitous system of seizing and sequestering every American vessel that falls into its power. When intelligence some time since reached this country of the seizure of the first vessels which arrived in the ports of France after the 1st November, (the day on which, according to Mr. Madison's assertion, the French decrees were repealed) the democratic editors pronounced it to be the unauthorised act of the director of the customs. Even the editor of the official paper at Washington expressed his belief, in the face of positive evidence to the contrary, that the French government could not be guilty of such atrocious perfidy. But even that gentleman, whose faith "aboundeth much," must be somewhat staggered by this accession of evidence. Even he will be obliged to confess, that a system of conduct uniformly pursued in all the ports of France for more than two months, must have emanated from the government itself. How he and his brother-editors, who have so long been engaged in the honorable business of palliating all the villainies of that "most dishonorable knave" the emperor of the French, will gloss over this affair we pretend not to conjecture : Well acquainted as we are with all their various modes of deadening the public feeling, and diverting the public indignation from its proper object, we are utterly unable to foresee the mode which they will now adopt. That they will attempt, in some mode or other, to palliate the villainy of France, the uniform tenor of their conduct does not permit us, for one moment, to doubt. Miserable men !--engaged in a perpetual strife with honor and conscience-condemned to the Sysiphian never-ending task of searching out and inventing excuses for foreign outrage-of making robbery look like honest dealing, and perfidy like fair and upright conduct !