Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

The public has been amused from time to time with news-paper paragraphs and extracts of letters from the West-Indies, announcing that the French privateers had received orders to cease cruising against the American trade—and that consequently, our vessels might navigate those seas with safety. How well founded these reports have been, let the experience of every American that has been met by a French cruiser declare. It is much more than probable that the several intimations lately made public of another favorable change in our allies, are bottomed on the same grounds with the preceding; and that nothing more is intended than to induce Americans to enter without apprehension the regions of ruin, let our brotherly allies, deprived of these resources, should incur the danger of wanting provision.—Let us be on our guard against such improbable tales—Let us have evidence more worthy of reliance than the unauthenticated paragraphs, circulated by enemies, it may be supposed, rather than by friends, before we put ourselves in the way of being made a sacrifice to the cupidity and unbridled licence of a banditti as unprincipled as the barbarians of Algiers, Tunis, or Tripoli.