Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

CHARLESTON, June 10.

Orangeburgh District,

June 1st, 1799.

MR. TIMOTHY,

I ENCLOSE you an extract from a letter I lately received from Mr. Rutledge, and request you will publish it in your gazette.—Doing so will greatly oblige me and many of my neighbors, who are the constituents and friends of Mr. Rutledge.

"Peplar Grove, May 19, '99.

"The strong proofs of federalism I witnessed in my late ride through the districts of Orangeburgh and Beaufort, afforded me more pleasure than I can describe to you.—Every man I conversed with, seemed quite weaned of all his former predilection for France, to be well satisfied with the administration of the federal government, to love his own country exclusively, and determined to defend her independence, in defiance of every hazard. I was highly flattered to find that those of our fellow citizens who, at a very awful crisis, had done me the honor to elect me as their representative in our federal legislature, entertained such patriotic and honorable sentiments; as long as they shall prevail generally among our countrymen, their liberties will be safe, and we shall have nothing to fear from the anger, the ambition, or the avarice of France. In answer to your enquiry, whether we are to be at war or peace with that country, I can only give you my opinion on this interesting subject—they are, that the return of peace and the establishment of a well organized government will prove fatal to the directory and to the two councils; and indeed to every man who participates in the administration of the present government of France; that they all very well know their reign will be commensurate with the reign of anarchy and despotism.; that they will not enter seriously into negotiations with any of the powers at war with France, till constrained to do so by pecuniary embarrassments; and to ward them off as long as they possibly can, the French government will make war, (or threaten to do so) on every country from which there is the least chance of obtaining money. The monies plundered from one state, furnish the means of destroying another, and thus loans and tributes have become as necessary for preserving the existing state of things in France, as carnage is for the beasts of prey. If, however there should fortunately be an ebb in the affairs of France, and her plundering career be checked, she must immediately sheathe the sword. Her internal resources have failed long ago; throughout the last year, the government and the war have been maintained by extrinsic aids; and from the countries which have been conquered, no further sacrifice can be obtained, for they have already surrendered their last shilling. At present Portugal seems to stand at the head of the pillage list of the French government, and the vast deal of Plunder lately got at Naples, will, I fear, enable them to make a successful invasion of Portugal. Whether the spoils of that country will determine the directory to attempt an invasion of the territory of the United States, or whether they will pick a quarrel with Spain, and then add her to the list of ruined countries, and make French departments of the Floridas and Louisiana, we shall shortly know. The want of a sufficient marine force will, I think, prove an insurmountable obstacle to an attack upon our territory; but if by any accident, that shall be overcome, I trust the wisdom and energy of government, the union and republican firmness of our fellow-citizens, will dispense us from such dreadful visitations as afflict many of the states of Europe which have been conquered pillaged and enslaved by the ambition, cupidity and tyranny of France.

"The information you require respecting the insurrection in some parts of Pennsylvania, will reach you before this letter can, by means of the public prints: in them you will see that general M'Pherson's army had returned to Philadelphia with the ringleaders of the insurgents; the deluded people they misled had returned to their ploughs, and tumult has been converted into order, without the effusion of blood. You will also have read in the papers, that the militia troop of horse had maltreated some of the peaceable inhabitants of Reading, and assaulted very violently the printer of that town. I strongly suspect all this history of the Lancaster troop will turn out to be a falsehood, and wish my friends in your neighborhood would suspend their opinions of it till they shall receive further accounts. I have the pleasure of being intimately acquainted with the gallant general who commanded on this expedition, and regard him as too great a disciplinarian, too good a citizen to have permitted with impunity, the gross outrages some of his troops are charged with. A much stronger reason, however, than that afforded by the reputation of general M'Pherson, for my believing this history to be false, is, that at Philadelphia it was published in the Aurora, and in that paper only.

"The editors of the Aurora being by many suspected (and by me sincerely believed) to be in the pay of France, it was not to be expected they would either acknowledge or applaud the patriotism of that portion of our fellow citizens of Pennsylvania, who have generally sacrificed every thing less dear than the love of their country, to the meritorious task of enforcing its laws. On the contrary, those who are acquainted with the jacobinic and exotic temper of the Aurora, must have expected to see, in that paper, every shaft of calumny and malice exhausted against our citizen soldiers, who arrayed themselves under the banners of their own government, against a band of rebels, stimulated to open insurrection by persons friendly to the views of France, and who, by every profligate contrivance their wit and wickedness can devise, are constantly exciting ungenerous suspicions against the legitimate acts of the federal government. If, however, my opinions are erroneous respecting the statements made in the Aurora of the Lancaster troop of horse, and they really did assault some of the citizens of Reading, without military cognizance having been taken of the delinquents, they are amenable to the civil authority, and the insulted citizens will obtain the advantage of having them tried by a jury of their neighbors, in the very town where the assault was committed, and before impartial judges. Our country being distinguished by a government of laws, an independent judiciary and an uninterrupted course of justice, the democratic printer of Reading, and the citizen soldier of Lancaster, will approach a tribunal of justice on equal terms, and with confidence of having the laws of their country impartially executed; for to the rich and the poor, and to all conditions of citizens, the measure of justice is this law of our land.

"I enclose you two Savannah Gazettes containing the addresses which were presented on behalf of the militia, judges and other gentlemen of the law, of Georgia, to Generals Pinckney and Washington, with their answers; and request, after reading, that you will circulate them among your neighbors: I know it will give them great pleasure to learn that our sister state, which, from local and other causes, requires more protection of the general government than any in the union, has become highly federal, and manifests a sincere intention of supporting vigorously the general government. The answers to the addresses merit much attention as they display very fully general Pinckney's opinions of the true situation of our nation, and its prospects with regard to the French republic. His sentiments on this subject demand a peculiar degree of confidence and respect from his fellow citizens; not merely because all descriptions of them venerate him as a great and good man, whose sentiments on all subjects are correct; but because. from his late residence at Paris, he must be supposed to have formed more just opinions of the present French character, and the real views of the French republic, than others can who have only seen them at a distance. When general Pinckney, who has studied in France the real intentions of that government, and who knows no fear, bids us to be on our guard, I think there is good ground for alarm, and it becomes a duty to guard every avenue against the approaches of our enemy and their agents. When he tells us the true object of French policy is to separate in every country the government from the people, and after having rendered them a prey to French ambition, to establish a despotism over them more atrocious in its excess than ever heretofore existed; when he and his very respectable friend gen. Marshall tells us there are no limits to the intrigues of France, and that one of its objects is the subversion of our government; there is to me some ground for alarm: when, in addition to the warnings we have from so respectable a quarter, we know that the aggressions of the French are daily increasing, and that our anti-federalists look with cold and philosophic composure at the insolence of a foreign power, when they are alive to the supposed errors of their own government, and when they who are crying out peace with France, and in some parts of the union taking every means to stimulate domestic discontents, there are strong reasons for alarm, and for cherishing the spirit of federalism and independence, which to the great credit of our district happily pervades every part of it."