and fraud, could devise. Judging of other nations, by that which he governs, he has attempted to impose on them as truths, facts so glaringly absurd as almost to bear their own confutation on the face of them. With the same impudence with which, in Syria, he accused Sir Sydney Smith of an attempt to introduce the plague into his army, has he recently, through the medium of his prostituted press, preferred a similar charge against the British government, of sending into France, for a similar purpose, bales of cotton and of wool, infected with pestilential matter.* Other charges equally

false

+ This fact is afferted in the Citoyen François of May 5th; in which the. people of France are alfo warned against the introduction of the vaccine innoculation" becaufe" say these good citizens, "we have heard from good authority, that the English cows are fubject to madnefs, and many fhocking difeafes unknown on the continent among animals of their species, and that their milk is one of the caules of the natural brutality of Englishmen, of their unfocial character, of their fpleen, of their fuicides, &c. Who can answer for it, that by the introduction of the vaccine innoculation, we do not introduce among the human fpecies, all the cruel diseases of English cows, and augment the mafs of human fufferings already so many and fo great." He concludes with the fagacious obfervation, Times Danaos et dona ferentes." Poor Dr. Jenner will no doubt be surprised to hear, that "this English difcovery has caufed many debates in the Medical Societies in France; particularly among thofe, compofed of true patriots, who fuspect every thing coming from a nation capable of paying a Marat" (we were formerly accufed by thefe true patriots of hiring Charlotte Corday to murder this fame Marat whom they deified ;) "and a Robefpiere to guillotine Frenchmen; a Barras to tranfport them; hiring affaffins to difpatch our ambassadors of pacification at Raftadt" (this however was, at the time, exclufively imputed to the Auftrians, but great liars, like great wits, have thort memories) in 1799; and our Chief Magiftrate in 1804, &c." In another confular paper of the same date La Gazette de France, the laws of Britain, mirabile dictu! are holden up as objects of terror to the citizens of France. Arthur O'Connor, it feems, is the author of this ingenious device. And he having informed the French public that the exportation of fheep or wool from this country was punished by the amputation of the left hand, and by nailing the right hand of the offender to a board on the pillory on which he remains for two hours, &c.; the fapient commentator in the above Gazette adds, "Travellers, who during the late peace, vifited England, affure us, that at Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, and Glafgow, they saw upwards of fifteen hundred hands nailed to posts in the different market places; and that in every large city or town in England, the streets are crowded with beggars, who have been rendered unable to gain their livelihood, by having their left hand cut off, for exporting a fingle theep to Ireland or to Scotland." Mark the conclufion. "It is time for Europe to unite against a nation which difgraces the prefent civilization of the world: and the ferocious character of which may be read in its criminal laws. In the criminal code of Great Britain are near a hundred capital

crimes

false and equally preposterous have made their appearance in the consular prints, all of which will meet with implicit belief from the people of France, who, in respect of foreign nations, are the most ignorant people in Europe; and as credulity is generally the offspring of ignorance, so are they equally credulous, But the grand instrument employed by this adept in the use of revolutionary weapons has been the plot ascribed to the British cabinet of not only fomenting a civil war in France, but of conspiring to assassinate the First Consul. It was natural to suppose, that what passed on the trial of Peltier, to say nothing of our national character, would have sufficed to discourage Buonaparté from the rash. attempt to impose this fabrication on the world. But he had seen so many fabrications of the same kind completely succeeed in the various stages of the revolution, (not to overlook the Parisian plot against that respectable patriot JEAN DE BRIE, and his worthy associates at Rastadt, the fabrication of which the First Consul deemed it expedient to expose on his first usurpation of the supreme power, though he subsequently chose to impute it to the Austrians,) that he could not resist the temptation of having recourse to it. And, indeed, his fears concurred with his policy, in this instance, to urge its adoption. We mean not to contend that no plan whatever was in agitation for effecting the desirable purpose of hurling this bloody Usurper from his throne ;--his Majesty's ministers had an undouted right, agreeably to the principles laid down by the best writers on the law of nations, to overturn, if they could, a government the existence of which had, by its own founders, been declared incompatible with the existence of the British monarchy; even Mr. Fox will not deny this, for, in 1787, he carried this principle of interference to a much greater extent, in the case of Holland, by declaring, that if there were two parties in a state, one of which was friendly, and the other inimical, to crimes which in all other countries" (that is in France)" are regarded merely as errors. To be fure we must admit that any one of the errors which their Conful has committed, in France or in Egypt, and which the civilized peo-ple of France regard as mere peccadilles, would certainly have brought his High Mightinels to the gallows in England, (where many a more honest man has fuffered for infinitely fmaller errors), although he be, as the Journal de Defenseurs afferts, "as much above Cæfar as above every other man borne by women!"

this country, we had a right to enter into a league with, and to afford support to, the former of these parties. If then, such right exist, in respect of ancient and regular governments, a fortiori must it exist in respect of a government, the fruit of recent usurpation, nurtured by regicide, which has not only proved itself incapable of living at peace and amity with other nations, but has openly proclaimed principles, and asserted privileges, absolutely incompatible with the independence of the neighbouring states.

The charge, therefore, preferred against our government, for labouring to excite a civil war in France, adimitting it to be well-founded, is as absurd as it would be to accuse the minister of reducing the colonies, and taking the ships of the enemy, in time of war. Whether or no any plot for the assassination of Buonaparté had really been formed, by those whose persons he had proscribed, whose children or whose parents he had murdered, and whose property he had stolen, we are not competent to decide. But the existence of such a plot may reasonably be supposed, without any violation of candour, or any violent imputation of guilt; we shall never be found the advocates of murder, nor the supporters of the jesuitical doctrine, that evil may be committed with a view to produce good; but it would be consummate hypocrisy in us to profess feelings which our heart disavowed, to deprecate the death of a man sinking beneath the weight of crimes, unparallelled in number and atrocity, or to say that if some loyal Frenchman were to rid the world of such a monster, we should lament the deed. We would neither commit nor encourage others to commit such an act, but if it were committed we should, for the sake of suffering humanity, for the sake of the civilized world, rejoice in the event. Such a plot, then, we can easily conceive, might exist; but most certain it is, and the truth should be proclaimed to the whole world, that the British government had not the smallest participation in it, nor even any knowledge of its existence. It was convenient, however, to the First Consul, whose real patron seems to be the father of lies, to assume the reverse of this as the fact; and so to represent it to the different courts of Europe, and to their ambassadors at Paris. The answers of these ambassadors, thus placed by the usurper, and not for

the

the first time, in a situation the most awkward, have little in them worthy of remark, except that of Mr. Livingston, the American ambassador, who, being the native of a country, governed by laws of British origin, and differing but little from our own, ought not to have taken assertions for proof, nor to have dispensed with the observance of a homely but not unwise maxim of justice-audi alteram partem; or do not condemn a man unheard. But the republican zeal of this diplomatic agent of citizen Jefferson was not to be controuled by vulgar forms, stale maxims, or obsolete principles; he even went beyond the apostate bishop, whose note he answered, by asserting that the papers annexed to the report of the grand judge; for judges in France, it seems, where the whole order of justice is inverted, pronounce sentence before trial, "prove that Mr. Drake, the British minister at Munich, has held a culpable correspondence with traitors;" (Mr. L. has forgotten the traitors who, in America, conspired against their lawful sovereign) "for objects which all civilized nations must regard with horror." He then, with the cunning of a jesuit, evidently insinuates, though he artfully professes to deny, that the British government was implicated in these acts. "The actions of a minister are generally attributed to the government he represents; and even when he acts against his orders (which I hope is the case in this instance) his conduct is so much identified with his government, that such acts tend to overturn social order, and to bring back nations to barbarism.' That Mr. L. is perfectly able to appreciate acts which are subversive of social order, we are not inclined to deny; but we must confess our inability to appreciate his logic. His republican excellency concludes with a tirade conceived in the pure spirit of the patriotic founders of the constitution and government of his own country. I beg your excellency to offer to the First Consul, in the name of my government, the most sincere congratulations for having happily escaped. the attempts of his enemies, directed not only against his life, but against an object more dear to his heart, the happiness of the nation of which he is the chief; a happiness which is the result of his noble labours in the field of honour, and in the cabinet, and which is not yet sufficiently established,

b4

We

established, not to be deeply shaken by his loss *." can make ample allowances for the novelty of the situation in which the ambassador was placed; but a man, with much less ingenuity than has fallen to his lot, might have sent a civil acknowledgment of the minister's note, and, at the same time, have forborne to give any opinion on the merits of the question to which it referred. This mode of proceeding, however, which, to men of plain sense, not only policy but justice seemed to prescribe, by no means suited the spirit and temper of this ardent republican, who evidently answered con amore, and, in his zeal to avow his own principles, and to flatter the First Consul, either belied the sentiments of his heart, or betrayed the most incorrigible ignorance, while he grossly insulted the feelings, and indeed the common sense, of the people, by holding up the most oppressive tyrant that ever swayed the sceptre of command, as the promoter of his people's happiness! He consider the happiness of those over whom he exercises the most intolerable oppression; of whose liberty, whose property, whose lives, he arrogates to himself the absolute disposal, not only without regarding the forms of law, but in direct contradiction to the law, over which his will is supreme! Was Tenasco, or Alexandria, or Acra, or Jaffa, or Paris, the field of honour in which he reaped their happiness! The basest parasite that ever licked the dust from the foot of a tyrant never pronounced a panegyric more fulsome, more false; never perverted facts more grossly; never libelled honour more wantonly; than this proud representative of a republic, founded by the rude advocates of unlimited freedom, by the sworn enemies of supreme hereditary power! If, indeed, as Mr. L. asserts, his conduct is identified with his government, the United States of America have here exhibited to the world a singular-instance of that frankness, honesty, and justice, which are generally assumed to be, almost exclusively, republican virtues! On the letters imputed to Mr. Drake, we can

*Whether from a coincidence of principle generally, or from a conformity of fentiment in this particular inftance, we prefume not to decide; but Mr. Fox, as the papers in his intereft announce, received Mr. Livingston moft cordially on his recent arrival in London, and invited him to meet a tufty band of British Patriots at his houfe. De Republicâ idem fentire, was declared, by a republican of old, to be the best cement of friendship.