"The information which I shall receive from Europe in a little time, will doubtless possess me "of the success of those negotiations which were to "have been opened in January last. If the situa"tion of your affairs is yet such with respect to "that barbarous regency, as that our intervention may be of some utility, I pray you to invite the president to cause to be communicated to me the “ means that he will join to those of the committee "of public safety, for the greatest success of the measures already taken. It is in virtue of the express request of the minister that I solicit of "the president some communication on this subject; "I shall be satisfied to be able to transmit it by a very early conveyance which I am now preparing "for France."

The secretary of state replied to him on the 6th June, 1794, by a letter of which the following is an extract.

"Your other letter of the 4th of June, is a power"ful demonstration of the interest which the Repub"lic of France takes in our welfare. I will frankly. "communicate to you our measures and expecta"tions with regard to Algiers; but as you will se soon receive the detail of those measures, which your government has pursued in our behalf, it "will be better perhaps to postpone our interview "on this matter, until the intelligence which you further expect, shall arrive."

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To

First, observe here, that Adet tells the people, that somebody in France, no matter who, had actually commenced negotiations with the regency of Algiers in behalf of their countrymen. prove this, he quotes a letter of Fauchet, in which this latter begs to call to the recollection of the Federal Government "the steps which are to be taken," and not the steps which are taken. Afterwards Fauchet, presuming upon what has been

done

done since his latest instructions came away, talks. in the very same letter, about measures already taken; but is unable to say any thing about the nature or success of them, until he receives further information from Europe, which he makes no doubt is upon the point of arriving.-Now, is it not very surprising that this further information never came to hand, from that day to this? And is it not still more surprising, that no traces of this friendly mediation, of these steps that were 10 be taken, and those measures that were already taken, should ever be discovered by the American Envoy to Algiers? When the French do what they can possibly construe into an act of generosity, they are not very apt to keep it hidden from the world, or to suffer the obliged party to remain unreminded of it.

But, let us hear how Master Adet accounts for his worthy predecessor's receiving no further information relative to this generous interference in our behalf. Fauchet told the government he was in daily expectation of it, and yet it never came. How will Citizen Adet get out of this? We have him fairly hemmed up in a corner here, and he has a devilish deal more wit than I take him to have, if he gets himself decently out of it. He tells us that the French government had taken measures for the relief of the captives, that the mediation was in a charming train, that Fauchet communicated this pleasing intelligence to the President, who waited with anxious expectation for further information, which Fauchet hourly expected to receive, and that " then Mr. Jay was charged to negotiate with the British govern"ment." Well; and what then?-Why, " and then Citizen Fauchet did not receive any "communication on the subject."What?O, oh! and so then, it seems, Mr. Jay's being ap

a 2

pointed

pointed to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with king George, prevented the agreeable information, "the facts proving the sincerity of the "French protestations of friendship," from being received! And did so completely do away all those steps which were to be taken, and which were taking, and which had already been taken, that they were never after heard of! Surprizing, that the United States should have chilled, should have perished even, the zealous interest that France took in their distresses, merely because they wished to avoid still greater distresses, by an amicable negotiation elsewhere !

Let us recur to him also. A lye that is bound down to dates is difficult to be successfully kept up.

The committee of public safety (it should have been called the committee of public misery) instructed Citizen Fauchet on the 5th of January, 1794, to inform the American government, that they were about taking means for "breaking the "chains of our captive citizens in Algiers." This "proof of the protestations of their friendship" did not come to Fauchet's hands till the 4th of the ensuing June, just five months, to an hour; and when it did at last arrive, Citizen Fauchet, could not tell by what route !-A pretty story this, and a pretty sort of Ambassador to receive dispatches of such importance, without knowing by whom or by what route. Let Citizen Adet and his worthy predecessor, Father Joseph, go and impose such humbug tales upon the poor stupid enslaved Hollanders and Genevese, they will find few such gulls here.

?

Again; how could the appointment of Mr. Jay prevent the reception of further information, if such information was daily expected Robespierre and his bloody colleagues, who felt such a tender concern for the captives, could not hear of this appointment

4

pointment sooner than about two months after it took place; the information, promised, as they say, on the 5th of January, must therefore have been on the way, and what, then, I would be glad to know, prevented its coming to hand? That it never did. come to hand, Master Adet has confessed, and we must inevitably conclude therefrom, that it was never either promised on that side of the water, or expected on this.-These dates form a net in which the Citizen has hampered himself. He had got the Messidors and the Fructidors into his brains, and could he have got them into ours alsó, could he have made us adopt the beastial calendar of Poor Richard, we might have lost our account too; but by sticking to the good old June and January, we have caught him out.

The fact is, the committee of public misery ne ver took any steps towards a mediation, never wrote any letter to Fauchet on the subject, nor did this latter ever expect any information relative thereto. The whole was a mere trumped up story to induce the President to relinquish his purpose of a pacific negotiation with Great Britain, by giving him a high opinion of the friendship of France, and leading him to depend on her for support. Had the President been the dupe they expected he was, we might have bidden an eternal farewel to independence. If Robespierre and the Convention had once got a hold of him, he would in vain have struggled to get free: their fraternal hug would have been a million times more fatal to us than the grapples of the Algerine galleys to the crews of our ships. Observe how anxious Fauchet was to obtain some overture on the part of the President: "I pray you to invite the President to cause to be "communicated to me the means which he will join "to those of the committee of public safety." This was all Fauchet wanted him to do; to ask some fa

vour or other. I doubt not but they would have really interposed with their brother barbarians for the liberation of the captives; but the chains which they would have knocked off from a handful of Americans, would have been rivetted on America for ever. The President saw the snare, and, with his usual sagacity, avoided it; and thus preserved himself and his country from disgrace and ruin.

The motive for advancing the charge at this time, is, to instil into the minds of the people, that the President felt extremely indifferent as to the fate of the captives. This base, this calumnious, this insufferably insolent insinuation, I leave to the resentment of those for whose sake he has undergone every toil and every hardship, has a thousand times ventured his life, and, what is more, has patiently borne the viperous bite of ingratitude. If there be an American, who approves of the late revolution, and who esteems himself happy under the change which it has produced, and who yet has not the courage to resent this audacious aspersion of the character of General Washington, he deserves to be curtailed of the signs of manhood : such a pusillanimous reptile ought not to be suffered to propagate his breed,

"5. The government allowed the French colonies "to be declared in a state of blockade, and allowed "the citizens of America to be interdicted the right of trading to them."

It is a wonder Citizen Adet did not swell the list here. He might, with equal reason, have complained that the Federal Government allowed the British to conquer the half of these colonies; that they allowed Lords Howe, Hood, and Bridport, tỏdestroy their fleets; and that they allowed Prince Charles to beat and pursue their boasting army. He might have complained, that they are about to

allow