The Providence Journal, And Town And Country Advertiser

OF HAMBURG:

By a broken series of Paris papers; it appears that on the first of February, citizen Marragon, the French minister at Hamburg, declared to the Senate that his public functions in their city had ceased. Such intimations, when given by the agents of the haughty French directory, have seldom failed to be followed by hostilities. It would not then be very surprising, if the French, recollecting the benefits they derived from the frost in Holland, which chained the Dutch ships to their ports, should have availed themselves of a like favourable occasion to seize upon Hamburg, and the immense mass of merchandize that lay weather bound within its walls. The north-eastern province of Holland, Groningen, and Friesland, which are adjacent, not to say contiguous, to Hamburg, would afford them the means of striking with promptitude a blow as favourable to their schemes of plunder, as it would be ruinous to that object of their inveterate envy, the British commerce--a blow that would be felt throughout this whole island, and that would produce particular distress and consternation in this great trading city.

That such an event is not altogether out of the contemplation of government, seems to be strongly implied by the orders given to detain the packets at Yarmouth, till there shall be some arrival from the continent.

It has long been matter of surprise to many, that so tempting a bait to republican rapacity as Hamburg should so long have escaped their fangs; and indeed their abstinence is not to be easily accounted for, unless we suppose that they wanted a pretence, or the consent of the Cabinet of Berlin. We have seen too much of their address in negotiation: and too much of the vigour of their councils and of their arms, to be able to say that they may not have obtained the acquiescence of the king of Prussia, or have disdained to ask it: and as to a pretence, they have certainly found one in the obstinate detention of Irishmen bearing commissions in the service of the republic.

London paper, March 3d.