Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

The following is an extract from a speech, delivered some years since at Nassau Hall, Princeton, (N. J.) upon the subject of the downfall of the Swiss Cantons, for which we are indebted to a friend who heard it. On request of that friend we insert it, to show the opinion that the orator entertained of a country once happy, free and independent, and which, had the people known their enviable situation, might still so remained. But being uneasy they grasped at a shadow which eluded their touch, and the foolish attempt has reduced them to a state of complete slavery.—N. Y. E. Post.

"The prospects of Switzerland under the scourge of French tyranny is thus strikingly depicted in a soliloquy, supposed to have been uttered by the Ghost of Rousseau. The shade of that eccentric Genius is represented as rising to view, and thus speaking.

Liberated from a life of perplexity, and beyond the persecutions of an ungrateful world: I thought to have rested free from trouble, in the land of spirits. Vain life of fancied bliss! You alone my countrymen, whose prosperity has ever been my highest delight; and whose ingratitude, has served only to inflame my love, have interrupted my repose. My mournful Ghost quits the solitary mansions of the tomb, to hover over the place of my nativity, and mingle a groan of misery with my ill fated country.

Unhappy Switzerland! Where is thy dignified simplicity of manners? Thy boasted love of freedom? Which have been so often my favorite theme? Where thy marshalled valor; thy stern and lofty independence? which so long have triumphed over a world of tyrants? Alas! they sleep in the tomb of liberty!

No more shall thy departed heroes claim the admiration of mankind; but to brand their posterity with far deeper curses of infamy. Ye were once happy and innocent, but ye knew it not—the snowy summits of your mountains, were emblems of your purity. and the fertile luxuriance of your vallies, pictures of your employments; but ye were tempted by French liberty—ye sighed for laws of equality, and ye have obtained them; written with the swords of demagogues, dipt in the blood of patriots: but the dazzling polish of Gallic freedom, has soon been corroded by the rust of slavery.

Already ye begin to feel to the quick the scorpion's sting of oppression.—Your national councils is nought but a group of demons. Your cities a picture of hell. Geneva, once the happy seat of harmless pleasure; has now become the scene of pillage and debauchery. In her cheerful walks, where the harmless eloquence of love, dropt with melting sweetness from the rosy lips of beauty; sits the solitary raven feasting on human carnage. Contemptible slaves—Fill up the measure of your crimes—Destroy the glorious archives of your country; and then ring the tocsin of equality to crown the clanking of your chains."