Rhode Island Republican

For the REPUBLICAN.

Fellow-Freemen,

THE following is one, among the innumerable instances of baseness and deception, practiced upon the well disposed citizens of the United States, in order to influence them in the last Presidential Election. It was by similar falsehoods and artifices that the Adams and Pinckney ticket succeeded in obtaining a bare majority in the State of Rhode-Island. A detection of these impositions, however, has aroused the good people of this State to a sense of their rights, and given them a handsome majority in the Republican interest. We find that many ingenious fabrications, as palpably false and ridiculous as the one here recited, are now industriously circulated among the yeomanry and unsuspecting citizens, with a hope of again succeeding in their opposition, the ensuing election.

"It ought not to be forgotten, for its remembrance will keep us on our guard in future against like delusions, that previous to the election of Mr. Jefferson, his opposers declared that if he got the reins of government in his hands, a war with Great-Britain, ruinous to our commercial and agricultural interests: and a coalition with France, destructive to all religious and moral habits, would be the immediate consequences. Nay, a Minister of the Gospel of truth and peace (if he who advocates war and propagates falsehood can deserve that title) not many miles from the City of Trenton, on a Sunday preceding the election for the members of the Legislature who were to have the appointment of Electors of President and Vice-President, declared to his audience, from the pulpit, "that if Jefferson became President, our meeting houses would be burnt down or shut up; that our Bibles would be taken from us, and flung into the flames before our eyes; that the holy Sabbath, dedicated to pious devotion and peaceful rest, would be abolished;" and several other things which he must have known, if he had common sense, were vile falsehoods.--Not content with this, several men who are esteemed for their wisdom and supposed goodness, as soon as the sermon was finished, went round among the congregation, and enforced the truth of what they had just heard from the pulpit. It was under such terrific impressions as these, that the people of New-Jersey gave their voice for Mr. Adams in preference to Mr. Jefferson. And it cannot now be doubted that if the opposers of Mr. Jefferson had used no means but such as were honest and honorable, he would have been elected by the voice of four-fifths of our citizens.

Friends & Countrymen,

Such are the means practiced by those denominated Federalists, to deceive and entrap you. If they cannot prevail upon you either by lying, smooth words, or fair promises, they will then attempt to terrify you with threats of starvation, non-employment, and the like. Some are even foolish enough to believe it, when they are told by these federal disorganizers, that produce has fell, and a stagnation of business taken place in consequence of Mr. Jefferson's election. But any man of common sense, who will reason upon it, must know that the dullness of the times is occasioned by the general peace in Europe, and nothing else. I have myself, while held by the button, been several times led to believe, by their sophistry and palaver, what I afterwards found, on inquiry to be a positive falsehood. But I believe it will not be in the power of the most cunning of them, again to deceive

RHODE ISLAND FARMER,