Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

We have more than once contradicted the foul slander lately set in circulation by the adherents of our present rulers, viz. that the Federalists are in favor of a separation of the states. One would have supposed, that this charge is too obviously absurd ever to have been made: but absurd as it is, it is just as true as many other calumnies. On this subject, the Freemen of New-Hampshire have expressed their sentiments in a Memorial to the President of the United States. The language of this memorial is equally dignified and respectful; and that part of it relating to a dismemberment of the Union may be safely considered as the

FEDERAL CREED.

We are, sir, (say the Memorialists) from principle and habit, attached to the Union of the States. But our attachment is to the substance, and not to the form. It is to the good which this Union is capable of producing, and not to the evil, which is suffered unnaturally to grow out of it. If the time should ever arrive, when this Union shall be holden together by nothing but the authority of Law; when its incorporating, vital principle shall become extinct; when its principal exercises shall consist in acts of power and authority, not of protection and beneficence: when it shall lose the strong bond which it hath hitherto had in the public affections; and when, consequently we shall be one, not in interest and mutual regard, but in name & form only; we, sir shall look on that hour, as the closing scene of our country's prosperity.

We shrink from the separation of the states: as an event fraught with incalculable evils, and it is among our strongest objections to the present course of measures, that they have, in our opinion a very dangerous and alarming bearing, on such an event. If a separation of the states ever should take place, it will be, on some occasion, when one portion of the country undertakes to controul, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of another; when a small and heated majority in the Government, taking counsel of their passions, and not of their reasons, contemptuously disregarding the interests, and perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall by hasty, rash and ruinous measures, threaten to destroy essential rights, and lay waste the most important interests.

It shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert, both the event and the occasion, and the government may be assured that the tie that binds us to the Union, will never be broken by us.