Rhode Island Republican

FROM THE VERMONT GAZETTE.

Extract of a Letter from Captain John Michael, a disbanded officer, in consequence of the reduction of our standing army.

Niagara, April 15, 1802.

" My long contemplated sentence of destruction has this moment come to hand.-Our infamous President has ordered me into civil life. Alas ! what shall I do ? distant five hundred miles from any resource."

Poor creature! who does not pity Captain John Michael ? But let us hear what the inexorable President, speaking through the law, says in the case.

Extract from an act fixing the peace establishment of the United States-approved March 16th 1802.

Sec. 24. And be it further enacted, That whenever any officer or soldier shall be discharged from the service, except by way of punishment for any offence, he shall be allowed his pay and rations, or an equivalent in money, for such length of time as shall be sufficient for him to travel from the place of discharge to the place of his residence, computing at twenty miles per day.

Sec. 25. And be it further enacted, That to each commissioned officer who shall be deranged by virtue of this act, there shall be allowed and paid in addition to the pay and emoluments to which they will be entitled by law at the time of discharge--To each officer whose term of service in any military corps of the Union shall not have exceeded three years, (di pay) to all other officers so deranged six months' pay of their grades, respectively, for each year past service in the army of the United States, or in any regiment or corps now or formerly in the service."

Thus Capt. Michael, who has been serving upon forty dollars a month, and three rations a day, with a wife and three children to maintain, is now left in the wilderness, at five hundred miles distance with only 120 dollars bounty for the last 3 years, and 40 dollars for each additional year's service, and with three rations for every twenty miles, making seventy-five days rations, and only about forty dollars more for traveling expenses.

Alas! poor wretch, what will he do !

Another really poor wretch, who has been in the service ten years, without a wife to console or three children to prattle around him! suffering for years under the pressure of forty dollars a month and three rations a day, is now left in the wilderness with the trifling gratuity of four hundred dollars, with an allowance of one day's rations for each six miles and two thirds of his distance from home, or the pay for it, and perhaps not more than fifty dollars to plod along the road with, all the way home from Marietta to Lenox in Massachusetts./ This unfortunate deranged wretch bears the appellation of Captain Charles Hyde, and has written almost as characteristically as Captain John Michael. A friend informs us he writes nearly thus,

" Through the prevalence of Jacobinism the President has deranged me ; I hate him by God! By God I hate him! I hope you will help me hate him, for I can't hate him half bad enough."

How patriotic, how disinterred do these gentlemen, by their Sentiments appear ! To be ordered into civil life, when not trait of civility is attached to their characters ! how serious a calamity !

Republicans ! of such a description are the haters of Jefferson generally : accustomed to peculation, idleness, and dissipation, they love to riot on the pillage of the laborious, and hate civil life.