Virginia Argus

From the Aurora.

WHO ARE THE CULPRITS.

There is no man in the community, who more heartily contemns the little, mean & envious taunts, that every day we hear cast out against foreigners, who have fixed their residence amongst us, and are amalgamated in our community.

When a man of talents, industry, & morality, makes choice of this happy country, instead of that of his nativity—when he demeans himself with becoming decency and respect to our institutions, perhaps he is even a greater acquisition to the state, than if he had been born in the country.

He generally brings some improvements with him—he has reflected, and having adopted this government as the result of reflection, and not because he happened to be born under it—he becomes by every motive its supporter.

But far different is the case with those foreigners, who came out here avowedly for the purpose of acquiring fortunes, and then returning home to spend them.

They are the very bane of our political welfare in order to attain their objects, there is no deception which they will not practice—no falsehood that they will not propagate—no law which they will not find means to evade.

The capital with which they are invested by their principals, by being applied to the accomodation of our over traded necessitous merchants, makes them their abject slaves, their subservient echoes.

Let one of these monied agents make his appearance on exchange, and happy is the man who can catch his eye, or touch the hem of his garment—he is absolutely an oracie—he knows the secrets of the British cabinet—of the cabinet of St. Cloud—and he has a pretty good idea of what is to happen at Washington. A London paper of the 18th of February states, "that no less than 23 ships had, within a few days, arrived from America, giving them a seasonable supply of cotton, grain, and many other valuable commodities—that on enquiry it had been found that all those ships were consigned to Sir Francis Baring & Co.—that they had come in not like their precursors, with the stigma of violating the embargo, but under the licence and authority of the republican government."

Whatever amusement the fact of the 23 ships in question, having violated the embargo laws, and the London editorial remarks on it, may afford the tories and the British agents resident amongst us—it is a fact that must, in the eyes of foreign nations prove highly injurious to the public and private interests of our country, and it must bear most heavily on the feelings of every honest merchant, who, in submission to the laws and necessities of his Country, has borne every privation with patience. to perceive our object frustrated, and our nation depressed by a few unprincipled intriguers. That our government had any concern in, or knowledge of, the transaction, does not even deserve the remark.—Who then are the culprits? Is it possible that Sir Francis Baring & co. the bankers for the republic of the United States, the bankers for the bank of the U. States, can have any concern, directly or indirectly, in this business; and yet how does it happen that all those Cargoes should be consigned to Sir Francis Baring & co.?— And why is it asserted in New York and elsewhere, that the agent of Baring & co. in this country, supplied Mr. George M. Woolsey, of New York with the funds to load fourteen vessels which cleared out at Perth Amboy for Boston, &c. and sailed a few days before the passing of the enforcing law, with the aforesaid Mr. Woolsey on board, —and which vessels composed a part of the 23 ships stated to have arrived in England. This is an affair that ought to undergo the strictest investigation. Every individual merchant and trader is interested in it. If we suffer foreigners and runaways to violate the laws, and to make fortunes by monopolising our trade and degrading our national character, nothing but the contempt of foreign nations awaits us—the Consequence will be an exclusion from all trade with the continent of Europe— then poverty and ruin will be the result to our merchants. LOOK OUT.