Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

TRANSLATION.

From the Paris Paper called L'ECLAIR.

Petition of Mathieu Dumas, member of the council of five hundred, in the name of Louis Lebegue Duportail, former minister of war.

"Citizen representatives, in undertaking to present to you the remonstrance of my honorable friend, general Duportail, former minister of war, against the inscription of his name on the odious lists of proscription, I am actuated by a fraternal sentiment, I fulfil a civic duty.

"The case of this citizen renders necessary a decision of the legislative body, seeing that, on the one hand, no law concerning emigration, even those the most barbarously expressed, can be applied to him with the least appearance of justice, and that, on the other hand, he cannot be comprised in any of the exceptions contained in these very laws, in as much as the forced sense, which is ought to be given to the expression of the constitutional act, abandonment of the country, has never been fixed by law.

"Louis Lebegue Duportail, minister of war at the close of the session of the constituent assembly, and at the commencement of that of the legislative assembly, was decreed in a state of accusation in the night between the 15th and 16th of August: he partook in that proscription the fortune of Tarbe and the unfortunate Dupont Dutertre.

"Strong in his own innocence, he wished to render himself up to imprisonment in the Abbaye; I was fortunate enough to prevent him. An old domestic of the brave general Gouvion, or rather his faithful friend, the citizen Moutonnier, who came to Paris in search of me, after the death of that brave general, offered to Duportail, in Paris, even in the very midst of the volcano, an asylum which his generosity, his courage and his intelligence, rendered inaccessible to the researches of tyranny.

General Duportail owes his safety to the severe precaution of breaking off all connection, both with his family and his friends; he remained in that obscure retreat during twenty-two months and sixteen days, and did not attempt to leave it, until the decree which, assailing with the stroke of death the crime of hospitality, alarmed his delicacy, poisoned all his gratitude, and no longer permitted him to jeopardize his benefactor.

"He left Paris the 3d of May, 1794, with the passport of an American officer, who was happy in lending his assistance to one of those officers who had the most contributed in conquering the independence of the United States.

"Before he left France, Duportail enregistered in a public act, deposited in the hands of the notaries Hua and Martin, in presence of eight witnesses, a protest against the violence to which he found himself compelled to yield, and made, as an accused, a solemn reserve of his rights. You will hear with still greater interest, citizens representatives, the reading of this piece, because it has since formed the basis of an act of accusation against the courageous magistrate who received from the minister this profession of civic faith; the unhappy notary was, a short time after, dragged to the scaffold for having attested that noble and touching complaint of a citizen abandoned by the laws, and who protested against the abandonment of his country.

"General Duportail arrived in America the 16th July, 1794, and has not left it at this time.

"A few days after his departure, two of his brothers were accused by Fouquier Tinville, of having forwarded to that general