Alexandria Gazette

COMMUNICATIONS.

"Mr. Editor:—You have with praiseworthy solicitude, presented to the public the affairs of the District of Columbia, which will, as you say, be most likely, taken into due consideration at the next session of Congress so far as Alexandria is concerned, we have certainly arrived at a crisis pregnant with consequences.

In cases of public necessity, the plea may be held as a pious one, "that the end may justify the means;" but the expediency of any public exposure in civil life becomes inexpedient the moment it is clearly manifest that its further prosecution would tend to but little less than a public calamity.

In this posture of our affairs, what is the proper course for the people of Alexandria to pursue?—With due deference I will state my opinion, Let them, with candor and truth, state the precise public situation in which we are placed, and lay before our only and immediate representatives the amount of the public debt we have incurred by subscribing to stock companies of roads and the decline of our former trade with the interior country. Owing to and in consequence of our utter inability to complete the Alexandria Canal; the present amount of our unsupportable public burdens, and the blighting effects of the odious system of multiplied taxations and last, but not least, Let us say to them, we are not unmindful that the new mode of conveyance by canals and rail roads is fast superseding all others, for the transportation of produce and merchandise to and from the interior; and that we stand greatly in need of their fostering care, least we may be left far, far behind the spirit of public enterprise and public improvement now striding its way with giant's strides in every direction, under the fostering care of the States. Let all this be done by memorial, with that high respect which is due, and the glimmering hope of aid may become ripened into reality, and throw into our midst the glad tidings of prosperity, now overcast with deep solicitude.

JEFFERSON."