Alexandria Gazette, Commercial And Political

From the Phila. Political Register.

Mr. EDITOR,

The Law, passed at the last session of Congress, laying a tax on "Household Furniture," is the greatest encroachment that has ever been attempted on the civil rights and personal privileges of our citizens, and contains among other infamous provisions the following, which appears to have been expressly, if not exclusively, intended to expose the interior arrangement of every family to the idle or malevolent curiosity of the world.

Sect. 5th. "And each Collector, on receiving a list (of furniture) as aforesaid, shall subscribe three receipts, one of which shall be given on a full and correct copy of such list, which list and receipt shall remain with the principal assessor, and be open to the inspection of any person who may apply to inspect the same."

As this law was recommended, and most probably drafted, by our adopted Citizen ALEXANDER JAMES DALLAS, late of the Island of Jamaica, at present by the grace of Thomas Jefferson and nomination of James Madison, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, I may be permitted to ask that citizen, whether if a law had been passed in the year 1781, or for a number of years after his arrival in this country, requiring him to lay bare the interior of his household, in like manner with his present bill of inquisition, he would not have considered it a gross infraction of the rights which he had just acquired?—And whether such a law might not have afforded to his political colleague and official predecessor, ALBERT GALLATIN, (for he too had arrived as soon as 1784) an earlier occasion for exciting such an insurrection, as was produced by the denunciation, which he issued, under his signature at Parkinson's ferry, against any one who should dare to aid or assist in executing the laws of Congress, laying a duty or excise on Whiskey?

You would, Mr. Editor, certainly oblige your subscribers by publishing this odious Law, which takes from every citizen of the U. States, the privilege he has heretofore enjoyed, of considering his dwelling house as his castle. It is only by the exposure of such abominable despotism that a change of Rulers can be hoped for.

A CITIZEN.