Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

IMPORTANT.

Extract of a letter from the Hon. A. Gregg, a Senator in Congress from Pennsylvania, to a gentleman in Carlisle, dated

Washington, June 4.

I ought to make some apology for not having sooner acknowledged the receipt of your favours. - The fact is I would have done so, had I not from day to day been expecting to have it in my power to tell you what course our government would ultimately adopt in its foreign relations. It is impossible even now to speak with absolute certainty on that subject, but I think it more than probable that letters of marque and reprisal will be issued against the British, and perhaps against France also, as she will give no written assurance of the repeal of her Decrees, and in fact is practising on them as though she had never promised to repeal them.-

At this moment the House of Representatives is engaged in discussing the question for an open declaration of war, and the question will probably be carried there, but I think it will fail in the Senate, and as I mentioned before, letters of marque and reprisal be substituted. The urgency of a certain description of men to declare war now, cannot be matter of surprise, when it is known that they have been pressing for it, since the very commencement of the session, and their succeeding in their object in the beginning of April was only prevented by the embargo. That measure would not have been adopted at the time, had it not been to prevent war until the state of preparations would render us more competent to meet it.

My opinion perfectly accords with yours, that it is high time Congress should adjourn. Indeed, I think they had better have adjourned long since. I thought when the acts were passed for raising the army, for fitting the navy for service, for borrowing the necessary money, and for the procurement of all the requisite munitions of war, that Congress would have adjourned, and allowed the President time to have carried these acts into effect. In the fall we would then have had our army raised, disciplined and equipped, ready to take the field, so that if the causes of war were continued, the word and the blow might go together. To declare war now is, as you remark, tantamount to a paper blockade, for we are TOTALLY UNPREPARED as yet to carry such a declaration into effect.