fenfe of juftice will prevent a barter of their own rights and their own happiness for the gratification of any individual, however high his own claim to an unlimited contrul over his country. The conflict of jarring feelings, the ftrife between gratitude and felf-love, has, for a moment, fufpended the voice of injured freemen; but the feeble mound of gratitude will not long refift the impetuous and imperious cataract of self-prefervation. Gratitude! What means it when in contact with political juftice! What means it, when thrown in the oppofite balance of our happiness! Does an individual claim more feeling than ourselves, our families, our country! Does he demand sentiments in hoftility to our own repose! Human nature muft undergo a revolution before this can come to pass, and virtue yield its throne to vice. The fervices of the prefident, during the revolution, are decked in all their charms, to feduce us from a question of his prefent motives. He is held up to us as the high priest of liberty, to give absolution to our own fenfations. The amiable virtue, gratitude, is appealed to in our bosoms, to neutralize our indig nation, at his having figned the treaty, after the general fentiments of his country had been made known to him, in oppofition to it. Had his fignature been given immediately after the adjournment of the fenate, and before an universal expression of difapprobation of it had taken place, ingenuity might have found a cover for him; but the public mind feems to have been defignedly wrought up to the highest key of expectation, that the contempt of it might be more strongly disclosed. Is grati tude to put a feal upon our lips under fuch circumitances? Are freemen to be treated with the moft marked contumely, and to be paffive under it like flaves? Is the prefident to receive more reverence than our conftitution, and more devotion than liberty! Let us be confiftent, and either renounce our constitution, and our pretenfions to freedom, or rally round them in contradiction to the will of an individual. I will endeavour to prove to you, my fellow citizens, in the courfe of thefe letters, that our conftitution has been totally difregarded, and that the prefident has fubftituted his will, for the will of the peoplethat he has thwarted the affections of the people, and in contempt of their attachment to the republic of France, and averfion from Great Britain, has deceived the one, and crouched to the other. If gratitude is due to the prefident, has not France likewife a claim to it? Shall be prove ungrateful to her, and e prove grateful to him? Shall he practice deception upon the best friend of our country, a friend to whofe generous aid he owes his prefent greatnefs,-and fhall we prove perfidious enough to give it our countenance? Shall he take Great Britain into his bofom, Great Britain who fought to enslave us, who has been guilty of every baseness and every outrage against us, and fhall we be obliged to fmile upon the monfter, and receive the kifs of Judas? Shall he greet the tyrant George, as his great, good, and dear friend;" and fhall we be obliged to recognize fuch facrilege of liberty? Shall he colonize us anew, and fhall we be obliged to fubfcribe the fhameful compact? Shall that independence, which he affifted to establish, be proftrated by him at the feet of Great Britain-shall that conftitution, the facred bond of union and dear bought inheritance of the revolution, be trampled under foot by him, and gratitude ftill be chaunted in our ears? Was the revolution defigned to make him a monarch, and a few fpeculators noblemen! Is this the gratitude that is demanded? Are we to establish a political infallibility, and confecrate a political pope in our country? Is it longer to continue impious to arraign presidential measures? If fo, I will preach up a reformation, and dare to be a Luther in politics. I will ftrive to unmask the idol we have set up, and fhow him to be a man-and a man too, not fashioned according to the model of liberty. In figning the treaty, the president has thrown the gauntlet; and fhame on the coward heart, that refuses to take it up. He has declared war against the people, by treating their opinions with contempt-he has forfeited his claim to their confidence, by acting in oppofition to their will, and fhall we not dare to speak our injuries, and proclaim our wrongs! Fellow citizens, we are on the eve of some great event-our Jiberties are in jeopardy, and we must either rescue them from the precipice, or they will be loft to us for ever. One hope offers itself to us, and a confolatory one too, the house of reprefentatives of the United States. As we have looked in vain for patriotifm from the prefident, let us turn our eyes towards that body-they are our immediate reprefentatives-they feel our wants, participate in our injuries, and fympathize in our dif treffes. They never will fubmit to having our country degraded -they never will be paffive under the outrages upon our conftitution they never will be the inftruments of voting away their own and the people's rights. As our application to the prefident has been treated with fcorn, let us make our appeal to that body, which has the power of impeachment-and we shall not find in them the step fathers of their country. A treaty which has bartered away their rights, cannot, will not be fubmitted to-Let us, then, my fellow citizens, rally round our reprefentatives, and we may still be free! ATTICUS. August 21ft, 1795. American Remembrancer, &c. T FROM THE NEW-YORK Argus. CINNA.-No. I. Citizen Greenleaf, O expatiate on the juftice, power, and refources of Great-Britain-to juftify all her acts, however wanton and unjust to depreciate his own country, and to place her in the wrong upon every occafion, are favourite themes with CAMILLUS. Hence it was no matter of furprize to find him in his third number, attempting a formal vindication of GreatBritain for carrying away the negroes, and ridiculing our claim, on that fubject. As this is the first number that contains any thing like argument, it ought not to pafs unnoticed. By the treaty of Paris, his Britannic majefty agreed "not to carry away any negroes from the United States." This, fays Camillus, must mean either negroes which had been, or which at the ceffation of hoftilities continued to be American property. When the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, there cannot be a fafer or fairer way to obtain its true sense, than by confidering its circumstances, and the views of the parties at the time of making the contract, and that they acted with good faith to each other. To apply this rule; during the late war, many negroes had been taken by, or had voluntarily joined the armies or gone into the garrisons of Great-Britain. To reclaim them, and prevent their being carried away, was an object which our commiffioners had much at heart; and it is not easy to conceive how this object could have been expreffed in plainer or less ambiguous terms. It will be remem bered, that Franklin had an agency in that treaty; and perhaps no man ever excelled him in perfpicuity and pertinency of expreffion; that those negroes and thofe alone were in the contemplation of both parties, refults from the very nature of the cafe. It could not be neceffary to guard against new depredations of this kind-peace being made, all hoftilities of every kind ceased. As well might a clause have been inferted, to prohibit ships of war, of the different parties, from making |