Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

From the Columbian Sentinel

FRENCH INFLUENCE—No. IV.

MR. RUSSELL,

THE zealous supporters of the federal government, warmed by a just sense of indignation at the attempts made by France to subvert and make it subservient to her own purposes, may naturally expect, that I shall charge the whole body of opponents to government, admirers and advocates of French principles, with having been corrupted by French gold. No, my fellow-citizens, I am not actuated by so illiberal, intolerant spirit.—The sincere object of these essays, however useless they may prove in the event, is to allay the violence of party zeal, to remove from the great body of antifederalists, that stigma which has been indiscriminately laid upon them—to place upon the heads of the guilty alone the odium they justly merit—to convince their too credulous partizans that they have been deceived by false and hollow professions of patriotism, and that if they reject the incendiary counsels of those pretended patriots (who as Mr. Fauchet says have all of them their prices) the real friends to the people, to liberty and law, will receive them with open arms, and will bury all past differences in perpetual oblivion.

Mr. Genet, the incendiary minister of France, has been educated in the school of sedition and jacobinism.—He knew full well the weak side of the human heart. He had studied the example of the first masters in the science of instruction, and had learned the secret of governing the majority by the machinations of an artful and an intriguing minority. He had seen, that by two powerful engines, the mightiest monarchy in Europe had been battered to the ground.

A venal and abandoned press, devoted to sedition, is alone sufficient to involve in general ruin, the fairest structures—the most costly edifices of law and government. But combinations of men, for the purpose of watching the measures, and of "stopping the wheels" of a government, whatever they may stile themselves, whether denominated "constitutional societies," "jacobin associations," or by the more modern and elegant name of "affiliated clubs," are still more masterly inventions in the cause of terrorism and anarchy. I am individually convinced that no form of government, no civil society, can long under any circumstances, withstand the combined force of these two powerful enemies.

Genet, fresh from a country in which these terrible instruments of despotism were madly triumphant, heated, boiling over with that fanatic phrenzy, that savage, that fierce dementia which was epidemic in the sanguinary reign of Robespierre, urnamed the humane, made his first debarkation at Charleston, South-Carolina—a port of all others on the continent, the best fitted to promote the pacific objects of his mission. That his landing at this place was a part of that nefarious conspiracy to throw this country into the war, or to separate the affections of the people from the government, cannot at this period be denied, since it has been so often repeated in the public prints, and no pretext, no apology either official or private has ever been offered for this daring and outrageous insult upon the dignity of our country. The incendiary minister began his career by granting commissions for privateers to any who applied for them: by encouraging the spirit of rapacity and plunder; by authorizing and procuring the enlistment of soldiers within our territories; by issuing commissions and employing American citizens to begin a military enterprize within our jurisdiction; by receiving repeated addresses publicly as minister of France before he produced his credentials or had received his exequatur; by flattering the passions and the vanity of our citizens, and by persuading them to consider the cause of France as their own in his own fulsome answers to their addresses; by professing a regard and an affection for this country and its citizens which the event has proved to be false and deceitful; by engaging on his side (in what manner or by what means they best can tell) the Editors of several newspapers in the most populous towns in the United States; by encouraging the circulation of those prostituted vehicles of slander; by excluding from those papers (which have since been denominated French) every sentiment and every publication which would have counteracted their views—and lest any candid citizens should doubt the truth of this assertion, I publicly challenge any writer to produce a single publication in Bache's Aurora, Greenleaf's Argus, or the lying Chronicle, in which the federal government or the British nation, if mentioned, have not been abused and execrated, or in which the French measures, either in Europe, or with respect to us, have not been approved and applauded.

Like a weathercock, or like the Vicar of Bray, they have swivelled round and veered about with all the absurdities, contradictions and barbarities of the French jacobins. Genet had not only engaged certain papers to support his vile measures, but he had enlisted the ablest writers, whose "consciences had their prices." In what manner this has been done, whether by gold or flattery, is of little moment to the public who have suffered. Mr. Secretary Dallas a British emigrant, can no doubt resolve this point, if properly fee'd. He can inform the public of what nature his reward was for quibbling in defence of his patron Genet when charged with his traitorous appeal from the constituted authorities; and if we give any credit to the memorable, and never to be forgotten letter of Mr. Fauchet, Mr. Dallas could give us some light as to the negotiation with the flour-merchants, about which some envious clouds still hang and hover.

That Mr. Genet employed an engine still more forcible to batter down the goodly fabric of our constitution; that he had nearly-accomplished his object of involving us in the war, if the prudence of our executive had not snatched us from the impending ruin, I will endeavor to establish in my next.

LEONIDAS.