Virginia Argus

The speech of the American president, which we received too late yesterday afternoon to insert more than a sketch in part of our impression, is such a one as we expected. Not a document can issue from the mind and cabinet of Mr. Madison, that does not bear the stamp and seal of indiscriminate attachment to France and invariable dislike of G. Britain. These feelings pervade and influence the whole policy of his government, and while they lead him to palliate all the aggressions of one power, induce him to exaggerate and inflame all the acts of the other. What but such feelings could have made him attempt to draw such a distinction between different periods and parts of the conduct of France towards America? He tells us first, that there have been successive confirmations of the extinction of the French decrees, and that these induced him to hope we should repeal our orders in council. Most willingly, we reply, but show us that such successive confirmations do not consist merely in promises and state papers, but are furnished by solid and open deeds that cannot be mistaken—We see you, America, wanting to make us the dupe both of you & France, and desiring us to give you a substantial benefit in return for a mere paper assurance that France has repealed her Decrees. Every day furnishes us with ocular demonstration that these decrees are still the policy of Bonaparte's empire, and yet you complain of us because we will not be such idiots as to abandon that system which he and your conniving with him forced us to establish. Does not every vessel that reaches your ports, bring you fresh confirmation of the vexations and robbery to which you are yet exposed in the French ports! True, says Mr. Madison, Bonaparte has made an ungrateful return for our justice and fairness. He will not repair the other wrongs done to us, nor restore the immense amount of property he has seized and condemned.—But these acts were committed under edicts which do "not affect our neutral relations, and therefore do not enter into questions between the U. S. and other belligerents." Good God! does Mr. Madison mean seriously to make use of such a paltry argument—does he think we have been educated in one of his Colleges, that we cannot detect the poverty and impotence of it? America is a neutral power, a belligerent seizes and condemns her property, under no matter what edicts, and yet the President says that that does not at all affect her neutral relations! She is treated in a hostile manner, and yet her neutral character and rights are not at all injured!!! But these violations are committed, not under the Berlin and Milan edicts, but under others! Allowing, for the sake of argument, that there is some force in this argument, yet Mr. Madison must permit us to remind him, that one of the conditions, which he communicated to us, of the alleged repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, was that the commerce of the U. S. would be restored to the footing on which it was before they were imposed, and that henceforth America might carry on her trade with France without hindrance or molestation. Prove that it is so—prove that the conditions which were to accompany the promised repeal have been fulfilled, and our orders are repealed of course. But, if you cannot, we shall still conceive, as one of your own Secretaries said, that "those decrees are yet substantially in existence, and that however the Berlin and Milan Edicts may have varied their form or changed their name, they still continue to influence the policy of the French government."

It is true, however, that Mr. Madison, in alluding to the rigorous and unexpected restrictions to which the trade to France is subjected, insinuates the necessity of corresponding restrictions on importations from France. But how different always is his language in speaking of the conduct of France from that which he uses in discussing the conduct of England. He knows that our conduct has been the necessary result of the measures of France; yet he keeps this distinction studiously out of sight. One would have thought the imposition practised upon America, assuring her that she might trade freely and fearlessly, and then seizing her property, and ruining her merchants, would have roused the indignation, and swelled the tone of her Chief Magistrate—that he would have felt for his country; that he would have felt for himself. But no—"he has reason to be dissatisfied, and at some future indefinite period that dissatisfaction may be shewed in some restrictions upon imports from France?"

The affair of the President and Little Belt is brought prominently upon the canvas, and the whole blame is attributed to Capt. Bingham.—Notwithstanding the Court Martial, we shall never abandon our opinion that the attack was began by the American frigate—that she was sent out with orders to commit hostilities [why are her orders so studiously kept back!] and that it is against all probability and common sense that a 16 gun sloop should volunteer an attack upon a heavy 44 gun frigate. Certainly if we were called upon for an opinion, we would not now make this affair the subject of negotiation by a diplomatic character—but we would send a stout frigate as our ambassador to attack and capture the first American frigate she fell in with. 'Tis thus the British navy punishes any aggression upon it.

'Tis thus we painters write our names at Cox.

The rest of the President's Speech consists in urging the necessity of putting the country in a corresponding armour and attitude, of increasing the works of defence, and the military means of the State. The vast navy of the United States has received the important addition of a frigate to guard the coast. Now the very circumstance of the coasts and harbours of a Power which has so contemptible a naval force being unmolested by us, is a proof that we have used our naval superiority with exemplary moderation and forbearance.

It has been remarked that the present Speech resembles, in many parts, the Speech of last year, and that the politics of America are remarkably stationary. Every man must bear witness to the truth of this remark. America fluctuates between her inclinations and her apprehensions. She seems always to stand trembling and hesitating on the slippery verge of a war; and to be incessantly tossed about at the mercy of every event. a condition which, of all others, most directly tends to palsy the spirit, & to destroy the confidence of a nation, all evils which can befall a people, the first is government without any fixed principles or plan.—No description of rulers can be as pernicious as that tribe of vulgar politicians, whose measures are governed or dictated by accident, whose schemes are perpetually fluctuating, and to live from day to day, and from hour to hour, agitated by every blast of wind, and borne away by every current.