The New Hampshire Gazette

From the American Mercury.

A REPUBLICAN FESTIVAL

IN honor of the election and administration of President JEFFERSON, will be celebrated at New-Haven, on Wednesday, the 9th of March next.

The day will be opened with discharges from the Artillery.

At 11 o'clock will be formed a procession of all, who rejoice in the subject of the Festival. An Oration by Pierrepont Edwards, Esq, with other republican performances, will compose the exercise within the house. Select vocal and instrumental Music has been engaged. A public dinner will be provided, and there will be a Dancing Assembly in the evening. Private houses are engaged for all the Ladies who may honor the occasion with their company.

A general attendance is respectfully invited.

On that day we will rejoice. Because the election of President JEFFERSON put an end to the aristocratic influence of the advocates of a Funding System and a British Treaty, and scattered the combined forces of the enemies of our revolution. We will rejoice that a Standing Army, an expensive Navy, an odious Excise and a useless Judiciary are no more; that our houses, lands, carriages, stills, sales at auction, and domestic industry, are rescued from the grasp of an all devouring Treasury: that Presidential patronage has been diminished by the dismission of many hundreds of officers: that economy has succeeded to systematic profusion, humanity to a thirst for national glory, and peace to perpetual alarms of foreign danger.
We will rejoice, That we are redeemed from a house of Nobles, guarded by a superior; that Federalism at length wears its own character in its front, and deals out its falsehoods without the imposing aids of probability or power. and that in opposition to all its former professions, it now consists of hostility against the President. the heads of departments, the Congress and its measures. the decided voice of more than three fourths of our people and the Union of the States. We will rejoice that the spirit of the revolution now animates fourteen of the states. and that the same spirit is advancing in the other states as fast as the measures of the past and present administration The proportion of freemasons are known and compared: and that in this state where houses of our citizens are excluded from the rank of freemen, our electoral votes have risen rapidly from 69 to 4680, and that the approaching election promises a powerful addition.

We will rejoice that the measures adopted by our state legislatures to abridge the right of suffrage and to retain in their seats, men whose sole recommendation is their hatred to republicanism, have met a reception wholly opposite to their expectations; that the season is arriving, when the industrious poor of the State shall be made free, and when through their aid we shall gain a name and a legitimate existence in a republican nation.

Twenty years have elapsed since we rejoiced in the distinguished victory, which terminated in glory a tedious, distressing, and expensive war. Since that time the spirit of the revolution has had to contend against hosts of its privileged enemies armed with power; against plans of Monarchy in Convention and in Senate; against an unprecedented instance of national injustice and ingratitude towards its faithful defenders; against the insulting projects of the initiate leaders of soldier's earnings: against repeated attempts to re-unite us to the enemy of nations; against the extravagance and duplicity of those tinselled minions, whom we send abroad to teach the nations of the earth to despise us; against foreign gold and intrigue; against the parade of drawing rooms, the mean apishness of foreign tyrants, the adulation of a court and the corruption of useless officers; against the waste of public treasure for public ruin; against navies and armies; against an enormous and accumulating debt, and against the awful combination of military despotism, in the person of a foreigner, with foreign principles, in the hearts of Americans. Republicanism had to contend, in its infancy with more enemies than the manhood of monarchy could overpower. It has triumphed gloriously. It has overthrown the horse and its rider, and we will rejoice in its energies.

The four years which preceded the election of President Jefferson, were like the darkness which precedes the morning. They formed a reign of terror, proscription and violence, and the very name of republican was odious to every man in power. In the dark train of public measures was a provision to reduce to the condition a Standing Army 80,000 militia; to import the instruments of death; to increase the impost on articles of first necessity; to build and man ships of war: and millions of dollars were squandered on these wild projects as freely as if the men in power had known the earning of money. Envoys were sent abroad at vast expense in order to lay the foundation of dissensions at home, and by magic of alphabet to conjure up the necessity of a standing army. The President was empowered to build or procure frigates at any price; to borrow money at 8 per cent; more millions of money were appropriated, kingly power given to the President; aliens subjected to his will: jails made the portion of those seditious subjects, who dared to question his supremacy: the odious Stamp Act was passed; our houses and lands appraised and our windows counted: our streets infested with the uniformed riff-raff of creation embodied to give iron force to the reign of order and through all these measures that miracle of human invention the British government, "dragging its slow length along" in the deceitful form of a "defence of the American Constitution."

We will never forget that all these terrific measures were to humble the friends of the revolution; nor will we forget that its enemies rejoiced in & aided these measures; but that all their arts to irritate foreign nations were unsuccessful. We will remember that the object was to raise up privileged orders, to substitute stars and ribbons in place of merit, and to overwhelm in the magnitude of public debt the baseness of its origin and all hope of its extinction. We will remember that from the President to the humblest officer, contempt for republican government was a conspicuous characteristic of political merit, and that some of our own neighbors were first among the foremost to dispose of the labors of a betrayed soldiery, and to sacrifice to a succession of jobs the rights of millions, and to take to themselves the honors and profits, resulting from an ingenious uniformity of political wrong. We rejoice that of the talents, integrity, wisdom, and consistency of such men no proof remained, but their own solitary testimony, in opposition to recorded evidence of all their measures and to the conclusive decision of all the rest of the union.

We rejoice that from the meditated destruction of our rights we were redeemed by the exertions of our Southern brethren. In the midst of imaginary triumphs our enemies were overwhelmed by a sure and sudden destruction, and we will rejoice that the places, which once knew them, will know them no more forever.

We will rejoice, That President Jefferson gained his high office by a triumph of principle over faction-that he entered on its duties; professing the purest of republican principles; that he offered the olive-branch to his enemies; that he retained most of them in office till their own conduct convinced the public of their demerits; that he has shown himself capable of viewing the whole ground and of administering on principles far elevated above local prejudices or vindictive animosities; that his measures have confuted the calumny of those enemies of liberty, and that against their falsehoods his character has stood as a rock against the waves; that he has filled the high offices of government with men of unquestionable talents and integrity; that he has been gaining upon the affections of the people; that both houses of Congress second his measures; and that the minorities in those houses are standing monuments of the safety, with which error and even obstinacy may stand, when reason is left free to combat them.

That the present administration has not sacrificed our interests to foreign nations; that it has not controlled men's religious opinions, nor warped to its views the religious professions of any class of men; that it has offered no violence to the altar; that it has not availed itself of mob-plots or Ocean massacres, of sedition acts or false alarms; that it has deliberately advanced in relieving the public burdens; in diffusing a knowledge of its measures, and has reposed itself on the confidence and intelligence of a free people; that it has yielded equal and exact justice to all men; has cultivated peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, and has avoided entangling alliances: has preserved the State Governments in all their rights, and the General Government in all its Constitutional vigor: has respected the elective franchise: has honored the militia as our best reliance in peace; has preserved the supremacy of the civil over the military authority: has practiced a conspicuous economy: has faithfully complied with every public engagement, and advanced in estimation the national faith: that it has encouraged the industry of our people, and has respected the freedom of religion, the freedom of the press, and the rights of man; that none of the evils with which our enemies threatened the people, under the present administration, have arrived, and that far more blessings have been enjoyed, than were promised or expected.

We will rejoice, In the reduction of public expenditures; in the facilities granted to foreigners settling here, in our state of peace and prosperity, and in the full success of every experiment made on republican principles. We will rejoice that the amount of our external revenue, in the past year, has been 11,2,00,000 dollars, which is more, by two millions; than has been collected in any one year, from the same source and more, by 1,500,000 than the whole amount of the external and internal revenue for any year; and that in the past year, the principal of our national debt has been diminished 5 millions of dollars, and that 4 millions more are in train for a further reduction.

With such occasions of joy, we will meet to celebrate the festival, and to give our public testimony in favor of a President and administration, whose principles and measures have uniformly presented sure pledges of confidence to republicans, and insuperable arguments against the cavils and misrepresentations of the enemies of our revolution. Reported in behalf of the managers.

SAMUEL BISHOP.
PIERPOINT EDWARDS,
JOHN HEYLEGER,
JOHN R. THROOP
LEVI IVES,
PETER JOHNSON,
OBADIAH HOTCHKISS,
ELIJAH MUNSON.

Unanimously approved for publication and signed by order.
WILLIAM POWELL, Director.

New-Haven, Jan. 17, 1803.