The Providence Journal, And Town And Country Advertiser

From the Gazette of the United States.

TO THE PUBLIC.

The time has at length arrived, when the administration of our government is about to pass out of the hands of those who have been in the councils and confidence of our departed Washington! Men who are principally known only as the heads and favourites of a faction, composed in a great measure of discontented, fortune-hunting Foreigners, are now to succeed. This is a serious and portentous moment to us who are native Americans, linked in with the fates of our country by familiar relations, friends, possessions, local attachments, and a thousand nameless sympathies, who cannot, like our disturbers, in the day of calamity, fly without loss or regret to some distant quarter of the globe.

We have all observed, and the observation should now excite reflection and watchfulness, that this country has been tranquil, prosperous and happy, in proportion as the faction now about to predominate has been restrained and kept under; and, on the contrary, tumultuous and seditious in proportion as they have been allowed to gain any local or temporary ascendancy.

Men of uneasy and turbulent tempers have existed in the country from the first formation of our government; but they have been for the most part men of little personal character, and deserving of little consideration. At length, however, from the alliance of numerous men of desperate fortunes, of corrupted morals, aliens, desperadoes, expatriated patriots, refugees from European justice, together with many well-meaning but mistaken and deluded persons, they have increased to a formidable and regularly organized phalanx. All these are industriously trained and drilled to their exercise by ambitious demagogues, who wish for nothing so much as a revolution, from the hope of acquiring a consequence, of which they can have no expectation from their virtues or their talents.

Such is the faction, against which the good and the wise have now to contend;---a noxious, poisonous weed, which, like the gourd of Jonah, has sprung up and gained its maturity during the night of neglect, fostered by the favouring darkness of obscurity and contempt, till its spreading branches have become co-extensive with the nation, threatening to smother the growth of our morals, religion, liberty and national dignity.

These are the fruits of laxness and lethargy in the friends of good government and necessary subordination. It is now high time to awake from this torpid indifference.

Active vigilance, and not forbearance, is the virtue which our country demands. It is now too late to despise what we have been accustomed to view with a mixture of contempt, disgust and pity. The Serpent, generated in the slime and filth of Jacobinism, has grown up to a Python monster, which must be attacked and subdued, although his breath bears pestilence, and his fumes poison, to those who approach him.

In a land of universal suffrage, like ours, it is not the conduct of one or two individuals that we have most to dread. It is the general ascendancy of the worthless, the dishonest, the rapacious, the vile, the merciless, and the ungodly, which forms the principal ground of alarm. These are the men who have incessantly maligned the officers of our Government, collectively and individually, our courts of justice, our laws, our clergy, and our seminaries of learning. These are the men who called Washington a murderer; and these are the men to whom Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr are indebted for the two highest offices in the nation. From such men we have everything to fear. They already proclaim, in their appropriate jargon, that the "reign of terror" has ceased, and that the triumph of democratical and republican principles, over a tyrannical aristocracy, is commencing; in plain English, that the rabble has broken over all restraint, and are just preparing to imbrue their hands in the blood of those who may attempt to stay their progress. It is fallacious, therefore, to imagine that we shall experience only a change of men. Men of wisdom and honesty, who know that the government has been administered with fidelity, and the laws executed with justice, who also know the seditions and insurrections which such measures have occasioned, and the present brutal menaces of the triumphant party, must see that something very different from the equitable administration of our present constitution is to be expected.

It is a consideration sufficiently deplorable, in a Christian country, that a reputed infidel, an open scoffer at the person and character of the Saviour; and a reputed sharper, speculator and libertine, should be elevated to the highest stations in the government; and for the very reason too that they are thus reputed. But whatever may be the character and views of the President and Vice-President elect, their Administration will certainly be dangerous to the peace and constitution of this country; not merely, and perhaps not principally, from their official measures, but from the additional influence which it will give to the ignorant and the wicked.

Every man of reading knows, that our constitution, in its present form, and under its present equitable administration, secures to the subject a considerably greater share of freedom than has ever yet, in any extensive country, been found to consist with real liberty or permanent security. Every such man feels with alarm, that we are now in the high road which has uniformly led to despotism, through the dark valley of anarchy. Any additional weight, therefore, in the popular scale, must be fatal.

"Si quidquam mutare velis, unoque ictu, Stat genus humanum!" -Make any change, of this nature, and we are crushed together. Such has already become the audacity of the faction, that they clamour publicly of a recourse to the bayonet.

As we now proceed, we are rapidly tracing the steps of France, and have already arrived almost at the point at which they appeared stained with blood. Under these circumstances, nothing can save us from the horrors and devastations of a civil war, but a prompt, steady, and vigorous co-operation of all who have an interest in the preservation of peace. The daring must be overawed by an union of the wise; and above all, the ignorant and misguided must be instructed and set right, by industry unremitted and extensive as that which has been used for their delusion. If men of property and integrity will not stoop to these means, they will be bowed under the consequences.-

"Resistance must be bold, determined and unshrinking, or it is ineffectual: nay, it is worse than no resistance at all. With political knowledge, well or ill understood, is now involved everything which is valuable or worth preservation. Morality, religion, the laws, literature, our domestic safety and individual property, must perish in the common shipwreck."

Impressed with the justice and importance of those reflections, the Editor of the Gazette of the United States, having associated with himself a person somewhat conversant with books and men, resolves, if adequate support be afforded him, to exert whatever strength he possesses, to uphold the cause of truth and righteousness; to set up and maintain a standard which shall serve as a rallying point to all who contend for the cause of peace and due subordination; to diffuse correct and salutary notions of the principles of our government, and the interests of the people; to caution and admonish the community against the pernicious doctrines and examples of bad men; to watch, with eagle-eye, the misrepresentations, calumnies and falsehoods of Jacobinical publications, whose filth and loathsomeness shall no longer screen them from exposure, or their authors from chastisement; to "invade, with boldness, the strong holds of impiety and anarchy;" and to call loudly in the ears of Americans, that "we have yet a nation to save; we have yet millions of loyal men, who have never bowed the knee to the Baal of Jacobinism, and we hope that many will draw back from the bloody idol, and turn unto righteousness, to the saving of their souls, their bodies and estates, and the general deliverance of their country."

With such views, the Editor is induced to adopt the words of the Roman orator- "licet omnibus, licet etiam mihi dignitatem patriae tueri: potestas modo veniendi in publicum est, dicendi periculum non recuso."

and to solicit the encouragement of all such as regard the dignity of their country, in every part of the United States. His exertions shall at least be honest and industrious, and such as he hopes will merit a generous support, and render his Gazette an extensive means, for the diffusion of sound and correct principles, in politics, morals, religion and literature.

It now remains to make known to the public the intentions of the Editor, respecting the future management of his paper, and the terms upon which he proposes to issue a Country Gazette.

I.

The Gazette of the United States shall continue to be published daily, to contain, as heretofore, important articles of foreign, domestic, commercial and Congressional intelligence: accompanied by such remarks as to the Editors shall seem pertinent and useful; important state papers; reports of proceedings and decisions in the courts of law; essays of a moral, political, commercial, economical and literary nature, &c. &c. To these there will continue to be added, every Monday, a complete wholesale Price Current of all articles of commerce in the Philadelphia market. The price, as heretofore, will be eight dollars annually to subscribers in the city, with the addition of one dollar to those at a distance.

II.

To accommodate distant subscribers, and in conformity to the repeated solicitations of numerous friends, as well as to counteract the pernicious effects of many mischievous Jacobin papers circulating at a cheap rate, a Gazette for the Country shall be published on Mondays and Thursdays, which shall contain all the important matter of the daily Gazette, free from advertisements; and for the convenience of Merchants and Traders at a distance, the Price Current shall be inserted in every Monday's paper. This shall be furnished to subscribers at the price of four dollars per annum, exclusive of postage, to be paid in advance.

III.

The first number of the Country Gazette shall be published as soon as five hundred subscribers are obtained for it, exclusive of those who are at present country subscribers; and on the publication of the first number, they may, if it is preferred, substitute the Country in place of the Daily Gazette.

Gentlemen disposed to become subscribers for either the Daily or Country Gazette, are requested immediately to transmit their names to C. P. Wayne, Editor of the Gazette of the United States.

Philadelphia, January 10, 1801.

All letters to the Editor must be post paid, or they will not be received.