Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

Extract from a Coup d'oeil over the situation
of Europe, contained in the Spectateur
du Nord, a German periodical work, for
the month of August 1798.

It was in the plans of the Directory that
the Americans should pay also their tribute;
but thanks to their sagacity, and above all
to their situation, they have hitherto known
how to disappoint these calculations; they
have even been able to obtain words of
sweetness and of peace, in place of that
imperious and menacing language, which,
a few months since, the Directory held to-
wards them. You have seen the singular
correspondence of the minister of foreign
relations, with the envoy of America, who
remained at Paris after the departure of his
colleagues. You have admired the able and
honest politics of that minister who, being
unwilling to admit the Envoys invested with
a character and furnished with ample pow-
ers, obstinately persists in recognizing those
powers and that character in an Envoy who
no longer acknowledges them himself.

You will have admired that delicate and
scrupulous policy, which no longer wishes
Mr. Gerry to return to the preliminary mea-
sure of a loan, the idea of which never en-
tered into the pure views of the Directory.
You will have admired the frank and simple
policy of citizen Talleyrand, who wishes to
negotiate with all his might, when there
are no longer negotiators; who speaks of
the alienation of the Directory, when for
three years the Directory has abused the a-
lienation of the Americans; who wishes,
in fine, to use all means of avoiding a rup-
ture, and of preserving peace, when France
for five years has made war upon America.

It would be difficult, says Mr. Gerry in his
letter to the minister, to find in the history of
civilized nations, any examples approaching in
cruelty to the depredations, the outrages, and
the sanguinary atrocities, exercised by the
French upon the commerce and the citizens of
the United States. It is after such a war,
that they insult the patience of the Ameri-
cans, by reproaching them with their alien-
ations, and to whom they presume they have
rendered ample justice, by publishing a tardy
arrête against these cruel and plundering
corsairs, of whom they have so long com-
plained.

The vigorous measures taken by the United States, will, without doubt, contri-
bute more to the protection of their com-
merce, than the phrases of citizen Talley-
rand and the arrête of the Directory. But
both these last have only labored in their
vocation, while endeavoring to disarm those
enemies they could not debauch; while la-
boring to avoid a war which may hurt, and
which cannot enrich them; while seeking
to heap on the Americans, all the odium
of a rupture, and to fortify amongst them
the disorganizing party which menaces their
repose.

You may qualify as you please the con-
duct of the Directory towards the United
States. It will be easily judged of by all
sensible men, and I perceive that it has been
appreciated justly by even those who most
favor the principles of the French govern-
ment.

At London, the most popular Journals
of the opposition, are, some of them merry
with the virtues of the directory, others
loud in reprobation of the baseness and cor-
ruption of that government. They also give
into suspicions of the honesty of the mini-
ster Talleyrand, and they are scandalized at
this Republican adopter of the duplicity of the
ancient court. On the whole, I find that
the friends of democracy, the few remain-
ing men of truth and decency amongst them
recover a little from their enthusiasm for the
French Revolutionizers, de greatest enemies
of the real liberty and independence of nations.

If such be th- language of those friends of
liberty the least u suspected of demagogy, in
England, where as yet they have not known
French liberty but by others' experience;
what think, must be the thoughts of the
friends of real liberty in Holland, in Italy,
in Switzerland, and in America.

* See Morn. Chron. and. Morn. Her.
" Nothing, indeed, can be more base than these
men," says the former of July 25, in speak-
ing oi the directors -Morn. Chron. July 26.