GAZETTE SELECTIONS. JULY, 1798. FRENCH ROYALISTS * IN the House of Representatives, on Saturday last (the 30th June) a message was received from the Senate, informing the House that the Senate had passed a bill, intitled, "An Act to authorize the *When the evacuation of Port-au-Prince was resolved on by the British, the Royalists of property, in that place, chose to be conveyed to the United States, which they were, in several merchant vessels, under convoy of an armed ship (the Mole Packet), which was commissioned by His Majesty. When they arrived in the Delaware, near Philadelphia, they were obliged, by the law of the State of Pennsylvania, to perform quarantine. While they were thus waiting, one PINKERTON, a vile democratic American, who hated them because they were Royalists, and who had, during the voyage, been refused to participate in their repasts, conceived a scheme for distressing them, and, if possible, exposing them once more to the knives of the republiIn order to carry this infamous scheme into effect, he wrote a letter to another republican, who was, at that time, President cans. B 2 President to regulate the landing of French passengers and other persons who may arrive within the ports of the United States, from foreign places;" to which they desired the concurrence of the House. This Bill, as it now stands, goes, 1. To authorize the President to prohibit or to permit, the landing of all white French passengers, who may have arrived, or shall hereafter arrive in this country. 2. To subject to a fine of 500 dollars or imprisonment not exceeding three years, every white French inhabitant who shall violate the regulations to be provided in the case. 3. To subject the Captain who permits such persons to come on shore (contrary to the regulations) to a fine of 500 dollars, and to authorize the arrest President of the Board of Health, representing the new-comers as very numerous and very dangerous. This intelligence was conveyed to Mifflin, the sans-culotte Governor, who moulded it into a report for the President, and this latter, like a precipitate old ass as he always was, made the malicious lie the subject of a message to Congress. This body, catching the spirit of the rest, immediately brought in a bill for preventing the Royalists from landing, without considering, that it was in itself ex post facto, and a direct violation of the Treaty with Great Britain.I alone took the part of the Frenchmen. My interposition roused up a host of enemies against me: some scores discontinued to take my paper; but all that they could say, or do, had no effect. The Frenchmen, seeing that they had nobody else før a friend, applied to me to defend them. They furnished me with the means of proving the falsehood of Pinckerton's statements, and finally enabled me to save them from being driven back to the West Indies.-The bill passed in the Senate on a Saturday. On Sunday night I wrote to the President's Secretary on the subject; and, on Monday, just as the bill was brought forward in the lower house, I caused all the vouchers of the contradictory statement to be put into the hands of Mr. Harper, by which means the bill was thrown aside.-The documents relative to this envious affair ought to be preserved. and |