Novel as this doctrine appears, neither Mr. Bache nor any of his friends can claim the honour of the invention. It is borrowed from the code of the Revolutionary Tribunal of France, that hopper of the famous national mill, vulgarly called the guillotine. In this bloody court, no evidence is heard in favour of the accused. As much against him as you please, so that there be no loss of time.

This was the form of process intended for the President and his officers of state. Citizen Adet discharges his duty as accusateur public, consigns them over to the "national justice," and his advocate Citizen Bache now complains, that they have had the impudence to reply.

I shall leave guillotine lawyer Bache to continue his pleadings and to receive his merited reward, bundles of assignats and millions of honest curses, and shall just take notice of one or two articles of accusation which were not contained in the Diplomatic Blunderbusss, but which have come to light through Mr. Pickering's letter." Indeed," says he, "the French Minister has discovered an aptitude

to complain. I may cite, as instances, his letters "of the 9th of January and 3d of March 1796: the "former, because the colours of France, which " he had presented to the United States, were not "permanently fixed and displayed before Congress: "the latter, because some printers of almanacks or "other periodical publications in the United States, "in arranging the names of the foreign ministers "and agents resident amongst us, had placed those of Great Britain before those of France and Spain! Mr. Adet desired my declaration in writing that the government of the United States "had no concern in printing the works in which "the agents of the French republic were registered "after those of Great Britain, and that the works "themselves might be suppressed. I gave him an

z 2

answer

"answer in writing with my consent to his publishing it in the newspapers, agreeably to his re

quest. The answer states that in matters of this "kind the government did not and could not in"terfere. With regard to the colours, I must ob"serve, that in what concerns our foreign relations, "the president being the sole representative of the people of the United States, they were properly "presented to him. He received them with all "possible respect, and directed them to be deposit"ed with our national archives, that both might "be preserved with equal care."

The flag should, by right, have been permanently displayed before the eyes of Congress, to remind them of their duty towards the "terrible nation :" but then, the Citizen did not perceive that a great difficulty would have occurred from our having two chambers. To have cut asunder the emblem of fraternal love would have been a portentous sign; and, though the members of the Senate, who would have wished to rally under a sans-culotte rag, were few in number, yet there is no reason to believe that they would have patiently left their friends of the other House in the sole enjoyment of the honourable ombrage. They would have wrangled like the goddesses for the apple, or, rather, like dogs for a bone. The President, undoubtedly, foresaw this, and therefore he wisely determined to take it from them altogether, and to lock it up safely with the Archives of the United States, where neither moth nor rust, nor any thing else, doth corrupt. How different would its situation have been, had it remained continually displayed in the Hall!

If my memory does not deceive me, the American flag was carried to the Convention by Citizen Barney. This man has ever shown an uncommon zeal for the honour of the flag of his country; for, I remember

66

I remember, that he wrote a very pathetic letter from Jamaica, addressed to a member of Congress, expressing the grief of his at once noble and tender heart, at seeing the American flag hung up reversed under that of Great Britain, while he himself was in irons, and consequently unable "to avenge his dear country's wrongs.' Since those unhappy days Citizen Barney is become a French commodore of two frigates, and will probably rise to the rank of Admiral, if contrary winds should not drive him in the way of the cruisers of the enemy. He was some time sculking about the West India seas, and to be revenged of the British for insulting the American flag, what does the brave commodore do, but seize an American merchantman, swing her flag up reversed under that of France, and clap the captain in irons. There's retaliation for you! There's avenging his "dear country's wrongs" !-A few such instances of patriotism will, I hope, convince the British, and every other insolent overbearing nation, that, however vengeance may sleep for a time, the American flag will never be insulted with impunity, while there are Barneys in existence.

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To return and take farewel of the French colours; it is well enough to observe, that, on the day, or day after, the French Minister made his complaint to the Secretary of State, respecting the fate of the colours, the very same complaint was made in Bache's Gazette. Not that I would insinuate that Mr. Bache is in the pay of the Convention, and that his paper has no other support; the minds of the public have long been made up as to that point. But it is something worth observing, as it strongly tends to prove, that exactly the same thought may strike, at the same moment, two persons who have not the least connection with each other.

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art if he should remain here till I print an k! I will put his name beneath those of ys of the Savages of America; for I am. ry one will allow, that the nations they reare far more reputable and humane than his. range him after Citizens Cornplanter, Bulland Dog's-Head. Should we receive a mifrom the Hottentots, who wear unemptied round their carcasses, as the more brutish ionnaires publics in France do their tricoloured fs; should we receive a minister from this popeople, that of regenerated France ahall come er him in my Almanack.

If the Citizen was ignorant' enough to suppose, at the government could suppress one publication, e certainly must believe that its power extended o others also; and then, how comes it to pass, hat he had not demanded the suppression of some other works that I could mention (if I dared), which seem to be better calculated for giving offence than a poor inoffensive Almanack. But, in these, I suppose, the Citizen found nothing to wound that little something, which, it seems, tickles the hearts of republicans as well as those of royalists. It is diverting enough to see the vanity of a democratic citizen breaking out into complaints about precedence; about the post of honour in a twopenny Almanack, and an Almanack too of the

Old Style." The reptiles that have sprung up out of the ruins of the French nobility, are ten thousand times more bloated with vanity than that nobility, or any other, ever was. They know they are despised, and they wish to obtain by force what the will refuses them. They have fully verified the old maxim: "Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll "ride to the devil."

There are some other facts that Mr. Pickering's letter has brought to light, which will command at