National Gazette

Address from a writer in the Virginia Gazette, signed Philo Franklin, to the Printers of that paper.

I observe that in compliance with the request of one of your subscribers, you are now communicating to the public, the several reports of the Secretary of the Treasury made in pursuance of the late resolutions of the House of Representatives of the United States, requesting, information for the first time respecting the real state of the Treasury department.—It would probably aid the public mind in forming just conclusions from these reports, to add to your communications the remarks of several anonymous writers, who appear to have bestowed considerable labour upon the subject, and by a judicious chemical operation performed upon the various, complicated, and heterogeneous mass of matter thrown before the public, to have extracted some of its characters the most essential and interesting to the community, and by this necessary secretion and simplification to have lessened considerably the difficulty of forming an opinion.

Amongst the various publications of this description, I have selected several pieces which have lately come to my hands under the signature of … Franklin, which appear to have been written with firmness, intelligence, and consciousness of rectitude. I now enclose them to you and can venture to assert, that a re-publication of them, in their proper order, will give pleasure and information to many of your readers.

While I am making these enclosures, I cannot refrain from calling your attention to the difficulty with which pieces of this kind (however decent and intelligent) seem to labour in getting before the public, as if most of the presses in the Union were as apprehensive of the consequences of informing the people of their real political situation, and particularly of the application of their money, as the administration itself, engaged in making such application and dictating the measures of the government.

Whether this phenomenon may be ascribable to an implied understanding between these various presses and the administration: or whether the vigilance and foresight of the favored, paper men, have gained possession of the presses, as the most advantageous posts for annoying their common enemy, the remaining mass of the people; I will not undertake to determine— But certain it is, that an appearance so extraordinary in a government which boasts of being founded in a fair compact of individuals, and can exist but in the intelligence of the great body of the people; must be ascribed to some extraordinary cause; and it is equally certain, that our fiscal arrangements have secreted the paper men from the mass of the people, have stamped them with a distinct character, and have bound them together by an incorporation, with distinct privileges and with militant views and interests.—They seem to have been moulded into a kind of regular military corps, and with the continual helps and favours of the government, are stimulated to assail the interests of all other classes of the community, with the advantages of well-furnished, well-trained veteran troops, over undisciplined, unarmed and scattered militia.

The Secretary of the Treasury has informed us too, that there are at present in America large sums of money drawn from abroad, for which he has invented the novel denomination of "INSTRUMENTALITY"—A jealous republican therefore, may I presume, be pardoned for insinuating his fears that this "INSTRUMENTALITY," to him unintelligible, under some of its various disguises and occult operations, may have been applied at least to court the complaisance and silence of the presses, the necessary and only competent vehicles of intelligence to the people.

That it is not so, I hope—that it is so I fear. I trust with confidence however, that your press will never furnish a justification to such apprehensions, and that it will always exhibit a proper respect for the discretion and virtue of the people at large, by communicating without respect to parties or persons, whatever may serve to inform, instruct, or amuse.