The national intelligencer and Washington advertiser. (Washington City [D.C.]), 1806-02-05 00:00:00

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER, AND WASHINGTON ADVERTISER.
VOL. VI.
WASHINGTON CITY, PRINTED BY SAMUEL HARRISON SMITH, PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE.
No. DCCCXXXI.
FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1806.
PAID IN ADVANCE.
IN SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
JANUARY 28, 1806.
Mr. MITCHELL, from the committee to whom was referred, the memorial of the merchants of New-York, submitted a report on that part of the same, which relates to "the defenceless situation of the port of New-York."
Early in the history of North America, the harbor of New York was discovered by the Dutch to be a convenient place of resort for ships. Subsequent experience has proved the judgment of the Hollanders to have been good. The place where the North river forms a junction with Long Island sound, is as well if not better adapted to navigation and trade than any which the Atlantic coast affords.
The city at the head of the harbor, is about 27 miles from the ocean, the ebb and flow of the tide is about 6 feet. The saltness of the water is not much inferior to that of the neighboring sea. The harbor is a bay or basin, surrounded chiefly by islands. Though the space from the foot of the Never-sunk hills, to the mouth of the river Raritan, and another space from Bergen point, to Hoboken are parts of the main land, which skirt the shores between the insular positions. The land is mostly low and is composed principally of gravel, sand, and loam; and in certain spots strata of solid granite appear.
The island of Sandy Hook, where the light house stands, is little more than a beach rising not far above the level of spring tides. Staten island swells into moderate hills, and presents especially on its eastern side several bold elevations. Long island whose western extremity loses its ridges and hills in the plains of Flatlands and New Utrecht, still retains at the Narrows where its cliffs are somewhat abrupt and prominent, several positions of considerable strength. In these shores of the two last mentioned islands, the army of the enemy was landed in 1776, and a repetition of such an invasion might be discouraged by the erection of suitable works to oppose it. Governor's Island has been already much improved by military works and is the spot on which Fort Jay and the principal other fortifications have been erected. Bedlow island, though very small, has also been considered proper for defensive operations, and in some degree prepared to annoy an enemy. On Manhattan island, where the city of New-York stands, there was once a fort and battery. These have been demolished of late years, under a conviction of their unfitness, as have likewise some more recent breast works and parapets, which were constructed but 8 or 9 years ago, were within a twelve month, destroyed by the people who made them.
Between these islands there are deep channels and rapid currents. Ships of large force may be brought in from sea and anchored in safety abreast of the town. And having once reached that station, there is water enough to convey frigates or even larger ships, quite to the city of Hudson.
To the saltness, depth, and swiftness of the current, is to be ascribed the openness of the harbor of New York during the winter. In 1780, its surface was covered by a thick and strong covering of ice. The like has never happened since, not even during the rigorous winter of 1805. And it is remarkable that while the Delaware, Patapsco, and Patomac are frozen, and Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria are secured thereby from the fleets of an invader, the bay of New York, though situated further to the northward, possesses commonly no such protection, but is accessible from the ocean with trifling impediment.
The insecurity of the city is evinced by other facts. With a small squadron of ships in 1674, the English took it from the Dutch. Shortly afterwards it was retaken with almost equal ease. No cause of attack occurring until the commencement of the revolutionary war, it was found utterly incapable of defence against a hostile fleet and army in 1776, and abandoned to the enemy by the troops arrayed for its protection. And that very foe, which then gained the possession, held it as a garrison until 1783, when on its evacuation, the inhabitants were enabled to return to their homes, after an exile of 7 long years.
Since the revolution, New York has greatly increased in population, extent, capital and enterprise. The memorialists state that there one third of the national revenue is collected. They hope so important a sea port may be thought worthy of an efficient defence. And they beg that a portion of the public treasure accumulated in that place may be expended in rendering, both that treasure and the city in which it is kept, more secure.
For the further information of the Senate, the committee beg leave to observe, that a piece of land has been already purchased by the state, on Staten island, comprehending the high point on which the signal poles of the merchants are erected. The greater part of Governor's island is understood to be the property of the state, a small part of it only having been purchased by the na-
tion. On these parcels of ground the labor of constructing works is the principal matter of expense. And it is in this posture of affairs that the memorialists, after the state has done so much, ask the nation to bear a proportional part of the charge, necessary to provide more formidable means of defence and offence.
Extravagant estimates have been made by certain jobbers and projectors. Artificial islands, and immense piers, and enormous floating batteries, and vast chevaux de frise, have been talked of; enough to absorb the whole revenue, and to terrify all sober calculators of the cost. The committee have dismissed those schemes, as favoring rather of the visionary and magnificent, than of the useful and feasible. They content themselves with recommending an appropriation to a moderate amount, for making further military improvements on the sites already purchased, and which the state may hereafter purchase and surrender; in full confidence at the same time; that a due proportion of the heavy artillery, armed ships, and gun boats of the nation, will be stationed at the harbor of New-York.
Under these impressions, the following proposition is submitted:
Resolved , That it is expedient to appropriate the sum of _____ dollars, to be laid out in such manner, and under such direction as Congress shall judge proper, in fortifying the harbor and city of New-York.
The committee have deemed it to be within the limits assigned them, to recommend another proposition, in favor of the capital of South Carolina:
Resolved , That it is expedient to appropriate the sum of _____ dollars, to be laid out in such manner, and under such regulations as Congress shall judge proper, in fortifying the port of Charleston in South Carolina.
And for the purpose of providing for other defenceless places, if any such there be, the committee submit another proposition:
Resolved , That it is expedient to appropriate the sum of _____ dollars, to be laid out in fortifying such ports and harbors, other than New-York and Charleston, as the President of the U. States shall think most conducive to the public security.
Committee room, Jan. 27, 1806.
[In Senate of the United States.]
JAN. 28, 1806.
Mr. LOGAN, from the committee appointed to consider the bill to suspend the commercial intercourse between the United States and certain parts of the island of St. Domingo; reported the bill amended as follows:
A BILL
To suspend the commercial intercourse between the U. S. and certain parts of the island of St. Domingo.
BE IT ENACTED , by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That all commercial intercourse between any person or persons resident within the U. S. and any person or persons resident within any part of the island of St. Domingo, not in possession, and under the acknowledged government of France, shall be, and from and after due notice of this act at the custom houses respectively, is hereby prohibited: And any ship or vessel, owned, hired or employed, wholly or in part, by any person or persons resident within the U. S. or by any citizen or citizens thereof, resident elsewhere, and sailing from any port of the U. S. after that time, or from any other port in America, after the day of _____ next; or from any other port whatever, after the day of _____ next; which, contrary to the intent hereof, shall be voluntarily carried, or shall be destined to proceed, whether directly, or from any intermediate port or place, to any port or place within the island of St. Domingo, and not in possession, and under the acknowledged government of France; and also any cargo which shall be found on board of such ship or vessel, when detected or interrupted in such unlawful purpose, or at her return from such voyage to the U. S. shall be wholly forfeited, and may be seized and condemned in any court of the U. S.
Sec. 2. And be it further enacted , That after due notice of this act at the several custom houses, no ship or vessel whatever shall receive a clearance for any port or place within the island of St. Domingo, and not in the actual possession of France: nor shall any clearance be granted for a foreign voyage to any ship or vessel, owned, hired or employed, wholly or in part, by any person or persons, resident in the U. S. or by any citizen or citizens thereof resident elsewhere, until the owner or the employer for the voyage, or his factor or agent, with the master, and one or more sufficient surety or sureties, to the satisfaction of the collector of the district, shall give bond to the U. S. such owner, employer or factor, with the master, in a sum equal to the value of the vessel and of her cargo; and such surety or sureties in a sum equal to the value of the vessel and of one-third of
her cargo, when it shall not exceed ten thousand dollars; and if it shall exceed, then in that sum, with condition that the ship or vessel, for which a clearance shall be required, is actually destined, and shall proceed to some port or place without the limits of such part of the island of St. Domingo, as shall not be in the actual possession, and under the acknowledged government of France, and during the intended voyage shall not be voluntarily carried or permitted to proceed, whether directly, or from any intermediate port or place, to any port or place within such part of the island of St. Domingo, as shall not be in the actual possession, and under the acknowledged government of France, and shall not, at any such port or place, voluntarily sell, deliver or unload any part of such cargo; and generally that such ship or vessel, whilst on such voyage, shall not be employed in any traffic or commerce with or for any person resident within any part of the island of St. Domingo, not in the actual possession, and under the acknowledged government of France.
Sec. 3. And be it further enacted , That all penalties and forfeitures incurred by force of this act, and which may be recovered, shall be distributed, and accounted for, in the manner prescribed by the act, entitled "An act to regulate the collection of duties on imports and tonnage;" and may be mitigated or remitted in the manner prescribed by the act, entitled "An act to provide for mitigating or remitting the forfeitures, penalties and disabilities, accruing in certain cases therein mentioned."
* Vol. 1. page 240.†
From the New York Evening Post.
Another Judgement of Sir Wm. Scott.
The following case, of which the manuscript copy has been handed us by a friend, will be read with no ordinary share of interest, as it contains the latest decision pronounced by sir Wm. Scott , on the former criterion as to what should be a discontinuance of a voyage, and which is directly in the teeth of the latter criterion at this time acted upon.
At present we confine ourselves to a single observation: Had it not been that the extremities of this country as a neutral nation, has driven her to examine, with the eye of severe criticism, the juridical decisions of this celebrated civilian, his fame might have been left to stand on a broader basis than that of an eloquent judge .
COURT OF ADMIRALTY.
DOCTORS' COMMONS.
Saturday, Jan. 21, 1804.
THE ELIZA, HAFF, MASTER. [Before the right hon. sir Wm. Scott .] SENTENCE.
Court...The only question in this case is, whether there had been sufficient bona fide importation of the bulk of the cargo in America to break the continuity of the voyage?
There is no question as to the property; but, under all the circumstances, it is fit the court should call for proof of the continuity of the voyage, (taking it in the most favorable view) which began at Martinique, had been broke by the entrance of this ship in a port in America. As to laying down any rule, an actual payment of duties, and a landing must, in my mind, constitute a full and fair importation, and in general where that appears, the court will look no farther; and where the papers are fair, it might induce the court not to put the parties to further expence. But are there not circumstances in the present case, which tend to deduct from the apparent credit of the transaction? The court would be inclined to shew indulgence when there are no special circumstances to raise a surmise that the fact might be otherwise.
Now, in this case it certainly does appear, that the sugar was brought from Martinique, and with this addition, that the master says he does not know of what country it was the growth or produce. I do not impute to the master anything, but he being connected with, and employed in the ship in the manner he has been, it is rather singular that he should labour under such an utter ignorance of this fact; it is a circumstance disadvantageous to the case, and it would have been more satisfactory if the master had fairly stated that in the former part of the voyage the bulk of the cargo had come from Martinique. It appears something of reserve which seems to take off the credit which otherwise would be due to the documents.
There is proof of a reshipment in America, and that supplies the chasm with proof of the unloading, and there is proof of a change of the crew in this case. That is a circumstance which might be interpreted into an unfavorable conclusion—namely, a plan of concealment and suppression of the real destination of this cargo being from Martinique to a French port, and this reshipment in the American port might be done with some intention of throwing a cloud over the fact. I think these circumstances of weight sufficient to overthrow the favorable interpretation it
otherwise would be entitled to. The court, therefore, is not quite in possession of the facts fully disclosed, to which it can at present apply any principle of law, but the principle of law must be applied to those facts when fully disclosed. My present inclination is, although the original intention might be to bring goods from the colony to the mother country, yet, if in fact there has been an actual payment of duties, and landing with no engagement to return, that that was a breaking of the voyage, and that they must be considered as two distinct voyages.
On the other hand, it would not necessarily follow that any indulgence which the government of America might grant to its own subjects, for the benefit of their commerce, would bind this court, which acts upon general principles, and therefore suppose America should declare in favor of its own subjects, that they might bring cargoes from a colony, and carry them, after landing in France, without payment of duties. I don't conceive such a declaration (feeling all the respect due to the commercial interests of all other civilized communities) would constitute a rule for this court, or that it should not decide such to be an entire voyage; therefore I shall call for further proof, namely, what duties were paid in America; and also, a precise statement of facts, in which mode these goods were imported and exported.
THE MEMORIAL
OF THE MERCHANTS AND TRADERS OF THE
CITY OF BALTIMORE,
TO THE
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, And the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled.
Your memorialists beg leave respectfully to submit to your consideration the following statement and reflections, produced by a situation of our public affairs in a high degree critical and perilous, and peculiarly affecting the commerce of their country.
IN the early part of the late war between Great Britain and France, the former undertook to prohibit neutral nations from all trade whatsoever with the colonies of the latter. This exorbitant pretension was not long persisted in. It was soon qualified in favor of a direct trade between the U. S. and these colonies, and some years afterwards was farther relaxed in favor of European neutrals. The U. S. being thus admitted, by the express acknowledgment of Great Britain, to a direct trade, without limit, between their own ports & the colonies of the opposite belligerents, another trade naturally and necessarily grew out of it, or rather formed one of its principal objects and inducements. The surplus of the colonial produce, beyond our own consumption, imported here, was to be carried elsewhere for a market, & it was accordingly carried to Europe, sometimes by the original importer, sometimes by other American merchants, either in the vessels in which the importation was made, or in others. In the course of this traffic it was understood to be the sense of Great Britain, and was explicitly declared by her courts of prize, that, although she had not expressly allowed to the merchants of the U. S. by the letter of her relaxations, an immediate trade between the colonies of her enemies and the markets of Europe, yet that a circuitous trade to Europe, in the production of those colonies was unexceptionable, and that nothing more was necessary to make it so, than that the continuity of the voyage should be broken by an entry, and payment of duties, and the landing of the colonial cargo in the U. S. During the greater part of the late war, and the first years of the present, this trade was securely prosecuted by our merchants, in the form which Great Britain had thus tho't fit to give to it. The modification of a traffic in itself entitled to be free, was submitted to on our part, without repining, because it presented a clear and definite rule of conduct, which, although unauthorised in the light of restriction, was not greatly inconvenient in its practical operation; and your memorialists entertained a confident hope, that, while on the one hand they sought no change of system, by which the assumption of Great Britain to impose terms, however mild in their character and effect, upon their lawful commerce, should be repelled: on the other hand it would not be desired that the state of things, which Great Britain had herself prescribed, and which use and habit had rendered familiar and intelligible to all, should be disturbed by oppressive innovations; far less that these innovations should by a tyrannical retrospection, be made to justify the seizure and confiscation of their property, committed to the high seas, under the protection of the existing rule, and without warning of the intended change. In this their just hope, your memorialists have been fatally disappointed. Their vessels and effects, to a large amount, have lately been cap-
tured by the commissioned cruisers of G. Britain, upon the foundation of new principles, suddenly invented and applied to this habitual traffic, and suggested and promulgated, for the first time, by sentences of condemnation by which unavoidable ignorance has been considered as criminal, and an honorable confidence in the justice of a friendly nation pursued with penalty and forfeiture.
Your memorialists are in no situation to state the precise nature of the rules to which their important interests have thus been sacrificed; and it is not the least of their complaints against them that they are undefined and undefinable, equivocal in their form, and the fit instruments of oppression, by reason of their ambiguity.
Your memorialists know that the circumstances which have heretofore been admitted to give legality to their trade, in colonial productions, with their European friends, protect it no longer; but they have not yet been told, and are not soon likely to learn, what other circumstances will be suffered to produce the consequence. It is supposed to have been judicially declared, in general, that a voyage undertaken for the purpose of bringing into the U. S. the produce of the belligerent colonies, purchased by American citizens, shall, if it appears to be intended that this produce shall ultimately go on to Europe, and an attempt is actually made to re-export and send it thither, be considered, on account of that intention, as a direct voyage to Europe, and therefore illegal, notwithstanding any temporary interruption or termination of it in the U. S.
Your memorialists will not here stop to enquire, upon what ground of law or reason the same act is held to be legal, when commenced with one intention, and illegal when undertaken with another; but they object in the strongest terms against this new criterion of legality, because of its inevitable tendency to injustice, because of its peculiar capacity to embarrass with seizure, and to ruin with confiscation, the whole of our trade with Europe in the surplus of our colonial importations. The enquiry which the late system indicated was short and simple, and precluded error on all sides, but the new refinement substitutes in its place a vast field of speculation, overshadowed with doubt and uncertainty, and of which the faint and shifting boundaries can never be distinctly known. Intention as to the object of our colonial voyages may be inferred from numerous circumstances more or less conclusive. To anticipate them all is obviously impracticable, and of course to guard against the inferences in this respect, which British captors and British courts may be disposed to draw, will be impossible. Our property is, therefore, menaced by a great and formidable danger, which there are no means of eluding; for, even if it should chance to escape the condemnation which this pernicious novelty prepares for it the wound inflicted upon our commerce, by arrests on suspicion and detentions for adjudication, will be deep and fatal. The efforts of our merchants will be checked and discouraged by more than ordinary inquisitions; our best concerted enterprises broken up, without the hope of retribution, or even reimbursement for actual costs, upon the footing of an intention arbitrarily imputed, and the only alternative which will be presented to our choice, will be either to refrain at once from a traffic which enriches our country, while it benefits ourselves, or to see it wasted and in the end destroyed by a noxious scheme of maritime depredation.
Your memorialists are the more alarmed by this departure from a plain and settled rule, in favor of a pliant and mysterious doctrine, so eminently suited to the accomplishment of the worst purposes of commercial jealousy, because the injuries and vexatious qualities of the substituted rule must have been known to those who introduced it, and because if these qualities did not recommend it to adoption, it is difficult to conceive why it was adopted at all. If it is meant that our trade to Europe shall, notwithstanding this rule, be allowed to continue without being subjected to extraordinary difficulties, operating as actual reductions and mischievous restraints; if it is meant that a few facts, known and comprehended, shall, as heretofore, form a standard by which the lawfulness of our European voyages may be unequivocally ascertained; if a wide range has not been designed for the inquiry after intention, and a real effect expected from that inquiry; if, in a word, the late regulation has not been supposed to be capable of bearing upon our trade in a manner new and important, we should hardly have now been called upon to remonstrate against a change. It is not pretended that the rule, now enforced against us, is levelled against any practice, to which we may be supposed to have lent ourselves, of disguising as our own the property of the enemies of Great Britain. That is not its object; and, if it were, we are enabled to assert, solemnly and confidently, that our conduct has afforded no ground for the injurious suspicion which such an object would imply. The view is professedly to regulate and affect our traffic in articles fairly purchased by us

From others—and if the consequences to that traffic were not intended to be serious, extensive and permanent, your memorialists search in vain for the motive, by which a state in amity with our own, and moreover connected with it by the ties of a common interest, to which many considerations seem to give peculiar strength, has been induced to indulge in a paroxysm of capricious aggressions upon our rights, by which it dishonors itself, without promoting any of those great interests, for which an enlightened nation may fairly be solicitous, and which only a steady regard for justice can ultimately secure. When we see a powerful state, in possession of a commerce of which the world affords no example, endeavoring to interpolate into the laws of nations, casuistical niceties and wayward distinctions, which forbid a citizen of another independent and commercial country, to export from that country, what unquestionably belongs to him, only because he imported himself; and yet allow him to sell a right of exporting it to another, which prohibit an end, because it arises out of one intention, but permit it when it arises out of two—which, dividing an act into stages, severs into the mind for a correspondent division of it in the contemplation of its author, and determine its innocence or criminality accordingly—which, not denying that the property acquired in an unauthorised traffic by neutral nations from belligerents may become incorporated into the nation's stock, and under the shelter of its neutral character, thus superinduced and still preserved, be afterwards transported to every quarter of the globe—reject the only epoch which can distinctly mark that corporation, and point out none other in its place—which proposing to fix with accuracy and precision the line of demarcation, beyond which neutrals are trespassers upon the wide domain of belligerent rights, involve every thing in darkness and confusion; there can be but one opinion as to the purpose which all this is to accomplish.
Your memorialists have endeavored with all that attention, which their natural anxiety was calculated to produce, to ascertain the various shapes which the doctrine in question is likely to assume in practice, but they have found it impossible to conjecture, in what way consistently with this doctrine, the excess of our imports from the belligerent colonies, can find their way to foreign markets. The landing of the cargo, and a compliance with all the forms and sanctions upon which our revenue depends, will not so terminate the voyage from the colonies, as that the articles may be immediately re-exported to Europe, by the original importer. But if they cannot be exported immediately, what lapse of time will give them a title to be sent abroad? And if not by the original importer, how is he to devolve upon another, a power which he has not himself? And if by a sale he can communicate the power, by what evidence is the transfer to be manifested, so as to furnish an answer to the ready accusation of fraud and evasion?
In proportion as this doctrine has developed itself, it has been found necessary to invent plausible qualifications, tending to conceal its real character from observation. It has accordingly been surmised that, notwithstanding the obstacles which it provides against the re-exportation of a colonial cargo by the importer, such a re-exportation may perhaps be lawful. Attempts on his part to sell in the United States, without effect, (which must often happen) may, it is supposed, be sufficient to save him from the peril of the rule: But, admitting it to be certain, instead of being barely possible, that these attempts would form any thing like security against final condemnation, it is still most material to ask, how they are to afford protection against seizure, by what document they can be proved to the satisfaction of those to whom interest suggests doubts, and whom impunity encourages to act upon them? The formal transactions of the custom-house once deserted as a criterion, the cargo must be followed through private transfers, into the warehouses of individual merchants; and, when proofs have been prepared with the utmost regularity, to establish those transfers, or the other facts, which may be deemed to be equivalent, they are still liable to be suspected, and will be suspected, as fictitious and colorable, and capture will be the consequence.
For the loss and damage which capture brings along with it, British courts of prize grant no adequate indemnity. Redress to any extent is difficult—a competent extent impossible; and even the costs which an iniquitous seizure compels a neutral merchant to incur in the defence of his violated rights, before their own tribunals, are seldom decreed and never paid.
Your memorialists have thus far complained only of the recent abandonment, by Great Britain, of a known rule, by which the oppressive character of an important principle of her maritime code, has heretofore, been greatly mitigated. But they now beg leave to enter their solemn protest against the principle itself, as an arbitrary and unfounded pretension, by which the just liberty of neutral commerce is impaired and abridged, and may be wholly destroyed.
The reasons upon which Great Britain assumes to herself a right to interdict to the independent nations of the earth, a commercial intercourse with the colonies of her enemies (out of the relaxation of which pretended right has arisen the distinction, in her courts between an American trade, from the colonies of the U. States, and from the same colonies to Europe) will, we are confidently persuaded, be repelled with effect and firmness by our government.
It is said by the advocates of this high belligerent claim, that neutral nations
have no right to carry on with either of the parties at war, any other trade than they have actually enjoyed in time of peace. This position forms the basis, upon which Great Britain has heretofore rested her supposed title, to prevent altogether, or to modify at her discretion, the interposition of neutrals, in the colony trade of her adversaries.
But if we are called upon to admit the truth of this position, it seems reasonable that the converse of it should also be admitted; that war should not be allowed to disturb the customary trade of neutrals in peace—that the peace-traffic should in every view, be held to be the measure of the war-traffic—and that as on the one hand, there can be no enlargement, on the other there shall be no restriction. What, however, is the fact? The first moment of hostilities annihilates the commerce of the nations at peace, in articles deemed contraband of war—the property of the belligerents can no longer be carried in neutral ships; they are subject to visitation on the high seas; to harrassing and vexatious search; to detention for judicial enquiry; and to the peril of unjust confiscation. They are shut out from their usual markets, not only by military enterprises against particular places, carried on with a view to their reduction, but by a vast system of blockades, affecting and closing up the entire ports of a whole nation. Such have been the recent effects of an European war upon the trade of this neutral country; and the prospect of the future affords no consolation for the past. The triumphant fleets of one of the contending powers cover the ocean; the navy of her enemies has fallen before her; & the communication by sea with France, and Spain and Holland, seems to depend upon her will, and she asserts a right to destroy it at her pleasure. She forbids us from transporting in our vessels, as in peace we could, the property of her enemies; enforces against us a rigorous list of contraband; dams up the great channels of our ordinary trade; avariciously, trammeled and obstructs what she permits us to prosecute; and then refers us to our accustomed traffic in time of peace for the criterion of our commercial rights, in order to justify the consummation of that ruin with which our lawful commerce is menaced by her maxims and her conduct.
This principle, therefore, cannot be a sound one. It wants uniformity and consistency; is partial, unequal and delusive. It makes every thing bend to the right of war, while it affects to look back to, and recognize the state of things in peace, as the foundation and the measure of the rights of neutrals. Professed to respect the established and habitual trade of the nations at peace, it affords no shadow of security for any part of it. Professed to be an equitable standard for the ascertainment of neutral rights, it deprives them of all body and substance, and leaves them only a plausible and unreal appearance of magnitude and importance. It delivers them over, in a word, to the mercy of the states at war as objects of legitimate hostility; and, when it seems to define, does in fact extinguish them. Such is the faithful picture of the theory and practical operation of this doctrine.
But, independent of the considerations, thus arising out of the immediate interference of belligerent rights, and belligerent conduct, with the freedom of neutral trade; by which the fallacy of the appeal, to the precise state of our peace trade, as limiting the nature and extent of our trade in war, is sufficiently manifested; there are other considerations, which satisfactorily prove the inadmissibility of this principle.
It is impossible that war among the primary powers of Europe, should not, in an endless variety of shapes, materially affect the whole civilised world. Its operation upon the prices of labor and commodities, upon the value of money, upon exchange, upon the rates of freight and insurance, is great and important. But it does much more than all this. It imposes upon commerce, in the gross and in its details, a new character; gives it a new direction; and places it upon a new foundation. It abolishes one class of demands, creates or revives others; and diminishes or augments the rest—and, while the wants of mankind are infinitely varied, by its powerful agency, both in object and degree; the modes and sources of supply, and the means of payment, are infinitely varied also.
To prefer to neutral trade, thus irresistibly influenced, and changed, and moulded by this imperious agent, a fixed and unalterable station, would be to say that it shall remain the same, when not to vary is impossible; and to require, since change is unavoidable, that it shall submit to the ruinous retrenchments and modifications, which war produces, and yet refrain from indemnifying itself by the fair advantages, which war offers to it as an equivalent, cannot be warranted by any rule of reason or equity, or by any law, to which the great community of nations owes respect and obedience.
When we examine the conduct of the maritime powers of Europe, in all the wars in which they have been engaged, for upwards of a century, we find, that each of them has, occasionally departed from its schemes of colonial monopoly; relaxed its navigation laws; and otherwise admitted neutrals, for a longer or shorter space, as circumstances required, to modes of trade, from which they were generally excluded. This universal practice; this constant and invariable usage, for a long series of years, would seem to have established, among the European states, a sort of customary law upon the subject of it, from which no
single power could be at liberty to depart, in search of a questionable theory, at a variance with it. Great Britain is known to suspend, in war, and on account of war, her famous act of navigation, to which she is supposed to owe her maritime greatness, and which, as the palladium of her power, she holds inviolable in peace;—and her colonies are frequently thrown open, and neutrals invited to supply them, when she cannot supply them herself. She makes treaties in the midst of war, (she made such a treaty with us) by which neutrals are received into a participation of an extensive traffic, to which before they had no title. And can she be suffered to object, that the same, or analogous acts, are unlawful in her enemies; or that when neutrals avail themselves of similar concessions made by her opponents, they are guilty or liable to punishment, as for a criminal intrusion into an irregular and prohibited commerce?
The weight of this consideration has been felt by the advocates of this doctrine; and it has, accordingly, been attempted to evade it by a distinction, which admits the legality of all such relaxations in war, of the general, commercial, or colonial systems of the belligerents, as do not arise out of the predominance of the enemy's force, or out of any necessity resulting from it. It is apparent, however, that such relaxations, whether dictated by the actual ascertainment of the enemy's force or not, do arise out of the state of war, and are almost universally produced and compelled by it—that they are intended as reliefs against evils, which war has brought along with it; and that the opposite belligerent has just as much right to insist that these evils shall not be removed by neutral aid or interposition, as if they were produced by the general preponderance of her own power, upon the land, or upon the sea, or by the general success of her arms. In the one case as completely as in the other, the interference of the neutral lightens the pressure of war; increases the capacity to bear its calamities, or the power to inflict them; and supplies the means of comfort, and of strength. In both cases the practical effect is the same, and the legal consequence should be the same also. But whence are we to derive the conclusion of fact, upon which this extraordinary distinction is made to turn? How are we to determine, with precision and certainty, the exact cause, which opens to us the ports of a nation at war, to analyse the various circumstances, of which, perhaps, the concession may be the combined effect; and to affix to each the just portion of influence, to which it has a claim?
How easy it is to deceive ourselves on a subject of this kind—G. Britain will herself instruct us by a recent example. Her courts of prize have insisted that during the war, which ended in the peace of Amiens, France was compelled to open the ports of her colonies, by a necessity created and imposed by the naval prowess of her enemies; and yet these ports were opened in February, 1793, when France and her maritime adversaries had not measured their strength in a single conflict; when no naval enterprise had been undertaken by the latter, far less crowned with success; when the lists were not even entered, and when the superiority afterwards acquired by Great Britain in particular, was yet a problem; when the spirit of the French nation and government was lifted up to an unexampled height by the enthusiasm of the day, and by the splendid achievements by which their armies had recently conquered Savoy, the country of Nice, Worms, and other places upon the Rhine, the Austrian Low Countries and Liege. It would seem to be next to impossible to contend that a concession made by France to neutrals, on the subject of her colony trade, at such a period of exultation and triumph, was "compelled by the prevalence of British arms;" that it was "the fruit of British victories;" or the result of "British conquest;" that it "arose out of the predominance of the enemy's force;" that it was produced by "that sort of necessity which springs from the impossibility of otherwise providing against the urgency of distress, induced by the hand of a superior enemy;" and that "it was a signal of defeat and depression!" It would seem to be impossible to say of a traffic so derived, "That it could obtain, or did obtain, by no other title than the success of the one belligerent against the other, and at the expense of that very belligerent, under whose success the neutral acts up his title." Yet all these things have been solemnly said and maintained; and have even been made the foundation of acts by which the property of our citizens has been wrested from their hands. It cannot be believed that the laws of nations have entrusted to a belligerent, the power of harrassing the trade, and confiscating the ships and merchandise of peaceable and friendly nations upon ground so vague, so indefinite and equivocal. Of all law, certainty is the best feature; and no rule can be otherwise than unjust and despotic of which the sense and the application are and must be ambiguous. A seige or blockade presents an intelligible standard, by which it may always be known, that no lawful trade can be carried on with the places against which either has been instituted; but the suggestions upon which this new belligerent encroachment, having all the effect
of a seige or blockade , is founded, are absolutely incapable of a distinct form, either for the purpose of warning to neutrals, or as the basis of a judicial sentence. The neutral merchant finds, that in fact, the colonial ports of the parties to the war are thrown open to him, by the powers to which they belong; and he sees no hostile squadron to shut them against him. Is he to pause and stop before he ventures to exercise his natural right to trade with those who are willing to trade with him, until he has enquired and determined why these ports have been thus made free to receive him? To such a complicated and delicate discussion, no nation has a right to call him. It is enough that an actual blockade can be set on foot to close these ports; and that they may be made the objects of direct efforts for conquest or occlusion, if the enemy's force is in truth so entirely predominant as it is pretended to be; & if it is not predominant to that point, & to that extent, there can be no cause for ascribing to it an effect to which it is physically incompetent, or for allowing it to do that constructive, which it cannot do and has not done actually. The pernicious qualities of this doctrine are enhanced and aggravated, as from its nature might be expected, by the fact, that G. Britain gives no notice of the time when, or the circumstances in which she means to apply and enforce it. Her orders of the 6th November, 1793, by which the seas were swept of our vessels and effects, were, for the first time, announced by the ships of war and privateers, by which they were carried into execution. The late decisions of her courts, which are in the true spirit of this doctrine, and are calculated to restore it in practice, to that high tone of severity which milder decisions had almost concealed from the world, came upon us by surprise; and the captures, of which the Dutch complained in the seven years war, were preceded by no warning. Thus is this principle most rapacious and oppressive in all its bearings. Harsh and mysterious in itself, it has always been and ever must be used to betray neutral merchants into a trade, supposed to be lawful, and then to give them up to pillage & to ruin. Compared with this principle, which violence and artifice may equally claim for their own, the exploded doctrine of a constructive blockade , by which belligerents for a time insulted and plundered the states at peace, is innocent and harmless.
(To be Continued.)
Foreign Intelligence.
Baltimore, Feb. 4.
Captain Pierce, of the ship Harriot , arrived last evening from Batavia, politely furnished us, at a late hour, with the hands of an outgoing commercial friend, with the London Sun of the 3d Dec. put in his possession by the captain of the British Barbadoes packet, Windsor-Castle , which he spoke on his passage—containing the following highly important statement of the signing of a separate Treaty between the emperors of France and Austria under the walls of Vienna .
The lateness of the hour at which we received the paper, has obliged us to confine our extracts to the annexed articles until our next publication.
LONDON, Dec. 2.
We on Saturday laid before our readers the distressing intelligence received from Holland, of the signature of a Treaty of Peace between the emperors of Germany and the French. The following is the letter from the Dutch admiral Kikbert:
Brutus, Nov. 25, 1805.
"Rear admiral Kikbert has the honor to inform the commanders of any of his Britannic majesty's ships which are on the coast of Holland, that the important intelligence of peace having been signed between his majesty the emperor of the French and the emperor of Germany, under the walls of Vienna, has been received by an extraordinary courier; and that the conditions were so settled, that until the ratification of the Treaty, Venice and the whole of the Tyrol should continue in the hands of the French. The archduke Charles is dead with chagrin and indignation. A more detailed account is every moment expected of the conditions of the Treaty, among which, it is said, there is an article, stating that the government of Austria is to pay to the emperor of the French 40 millions of livres."
KIKBERT."
Upon the facts communicated in this letter, we shall suspend our observations, until they are confirmed by more authentic intelligence. There are some circumstances relative to this, which tend to excite suspicion. We have received the Batavian State Gazette, of the 25th ult. which is the same day that the Dutch admiral's letter is dated. That paper does not lay one word upon the subject of a peace having been concluded, but it certainly is possible that the extraordinary courier, mentioned in Ad. Kikbert's letter, might have arrived after the paper had been put to press. It is, however, extremely improbable, that the intelligence should have arrived at the Texel before it reached the Hague.
If an extraordinary courier had been dispatched with the news of a treaty of peace having been signed, he would naturally have gone in the first instance to the Hague, as the seat of government, and not to the Texel. The distance between the Hague and the Texel is something more than 60 miles, therefore if the dispatches did not arrive at the Hague till the 25th it is hardly possible they could have reached Admiral Kikbert on
the same day, at the distance as we have already stated, of above sixty miles, and a part of the journey to be performed by water. To have enabled Admiral Kikbert to receive the news on the 25th, at the Texel, it must have reached the Hague on the 24th at night, & if it did, it is impossible to account for the circumstance of its not being inserted in the official paper of the next day.—The last accounts from Vienna are dated the 11th ult. At that time it was known that capital must fall into the power of the enemy, and yet they state the emperor's positive determination not to make peace; it is therefore difficult to conceive what could induce him so suddenly to consent to so disgraceful a peace. But what affords still stronger grounds for doubt upon this subject is, that letters have been received in town this morning from the Hague, dated the 28th ult. which are perfectly silent upon the subject of a peace having been signed.
Last night we received some additional Paris papers, tho' not of a later date than those we had previously received. They confirm, however, what we stated a short time since respecting the failure of some of the principal banking houses of Paris. The following allusion is made to the subject in one of the French papers:
"We are assured that the creditors of the house of RECAMIER having had a meeting in consequence of the failure of their bank, in order to examine into the state of its affairs, expected from its immense opulence, that they should have found the dowry of madame RECAMIER set down at several millions French. It was not, therefore, without some astonishment, that they heard it declared that her dowry was only 80,000 livres, and that madame RECAMIER had given it up to the creditors on her husband; such a conduct calls for no comment; it gives rise, at the same time, to many reflections."
It is also stated, that the Houses of Grandin, Cansanac, & co. Deville & co. F. Le Morne & co. Aubrey & co. and various others of equal credit and consideration, have likewise been obliged to stop payment. These events have occasioned the greatest alarm and confusion, and are attributed to the measures adopted by the emperor, which have drawn away all the specie, and deprived the bankers of the means of fulfilling their engagements.
In the same paper it is mentioned, that the terms which are now supposed to form the basis of the separate treaty between Austria and France, were brought to the head-quarters of Bonaparte by the Austrian General Count Ginalay . On this subject the following observations are made in one of the Paris Journals.
"But what kind of peace could Austria expect, when she no longer possesses what might be offered to disarm the conqueror? The Venetian states and the Tyrol had been objects of negotiation; indeed one of these countries might, a few weeks since have been accepted as a guarantee; but as now both are reduced by our victorious arms, the heart of the Austrian monarchy is laid bare to our mercy. Under such disastrous circumstances, there is no room for negotiation—the will and humanity of the conqueror must be submitted to."
The St. Petersburg Gazette contains an important article, from which it would appear that a complete understanding with respect to the objects and conduct of the war, had been established between the emperor of Russia and the king of Prussia, a circumstance which renders the intelligence of a separate treaty entered into by Austria still more inexplicable.
The details contained in the foreign papers become comparatively of little importance, until we are enabled to ascertain with certainty the truth or falsehood of the intelligence communicated by admiral Kikbert. A few hours will probably decide upon this important point, or at least put us in possession of some further particulars relative to this subject.
CONGRESS.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 21.
Debate on imposing a tax of ten dollars on every slave imported into the U. S.
(Continued.)
Mr. DANA's amendment, to substitute the word PERSONS in the room of the word SLAVES still under consideration.
Mr. EARLY I wish for the attention of the committee while I submit a very few observations on the resolution under consideration, which are intended to go to a single point which has been but slightly noticed by the hon. Speaker, but which may be placed in some points of view that are important. I mean to consider the subject as a matter of feeling, in relation to the state on which it is about to bear. To her it is not unimportant. The object of the resolution certainly is either to point the disapprobation of this nation at the practice in question, or to raise a revenue from that practice. It is either one, or an union of both these ends. If the object be to point the disapprobation of the nation against S. Carolina, I pray gentlemen to pause and reflect on the consequences of such a policy; and I beg all to recollect that they are interested as well as S. Carolina with regard to such policy. Those who regard either the feelings of one state or the peace and harmony of the whole nation, will do well to reflect before they

adopt a policy bottomed on such a principle.
As it may be, that the measure is entertained as a source of revenue, if this is the object, I will ask one question. Is the price they are to get, worth the evil they create? Is the petty sum of 40,000 or 50,000 dollars of so much moment? Is it a sufficient object to this government to induce them to adopt a measure, which will irritate and wound the feelings of a respectable member of the confederacy? Forty or fifty thousand dollars is a petty sum to this government; but it is not so to a state; it is not so to South Carolina. Let gentlemen, if they please, attempt to get round the question, by saying that this resolution is not exclusively confined to S. Carolina—the evasion is unworthy of them. The whole nation knows—S. Carolina knows, and we know what is intended by it; and it is the same as if S. Carolina was on the face of it. This sum, though trifling to the U. S. is not so to S. Carolina. The revenue intended by this resolution to be drawn from S. Carolina, will equal, if it does not exceed, the whole expense of her government. What, then, will be the situation of the people of that state, in case this resolution is adopted? It will be the situation of a people who pay a double tax. They will pay a tax for the support of their own government; revenue will be drawn from them for national purposes, as from the other parts of the union; and they will be burdened with an additional tax, equal to the whole expense of their state government. I will ask now, whether the evils attending such an imposition, and the reflections arising from it, will not necessarily irritate, wound and offend the feelings of the people of that state? Whether, then, we consider it as a measure to evince the disapprobation of the nation, or as a source of revenue, it flows from a policy equally questionable. The people, sir, of S. Carolina cannot avoid the reflection, that the finger of scorn is pointed at them; that a double tax is imposed on them. What will be the consequence? That which every gentleman must foresee. It is not difficult to foresee it, because it is a natural consequence; such as must follow wherever the common feelings of human nature are entertained. The consequence will be, an alienation of attachment to and respect for this government. I ask gentlemen to put the question home to themselves, whether the revenue they expect is worth the sacrifice? This is a question which ought never to be stirred in our national councils. Though older men than myself might better tell the committee than I can do, the effect of introducing this subject in any shape invariably has had on the feelings of the government, or on the representatives of the nation, I will undertake to give my opinion of it. Sir, I have always understood that this subject was found most difficult to be adjusted in the Federal Convention. I have always understood that, when brought before the councils of the nation in any period or in any shape, a fervor of feeling and warmth of sentiment never failed to disturb the public harmony. Every man knows the effect of the first application to Congress on this subject, by a man at the head of a noted body of men in Pennsylvania or Delaware, of the name, I believe, of Warner Mifflin. All know the effects of an application of a more recent date, in the other branch of the legislature, from some friendly people northwardly. All know the effects of the celebrated resolution laid on our table the last session, by the same gentleman who has favored us with the resolution under consideration, to make free all persons born of a mother in the territory of Columbia, after a certain period. All will recollect the height to which the feelings of men were wrought on those occasions. It is because the agitation of this subject always had, and always will have the same effect, that I think it ought never to be introduced into this House.
There is another idea on this subject, of no small importance. We constantly hear from different quarters of the union, complaints relative to the unprotected state of trade. Memorials to this effect are every day heaping themselves upon us. I submit, then, the question, whether if we legalize this trade, so far as the imposition of a tax can legalize it, we shall not become bound to protect it as completely as we are bound to protect any other species of traffic? And whether we shall not receive crowds of memorials to this effect, from negro merchants? I believe we shall; and if, by collecting a revenue, we legalize the traffic, they will have the same rights as other traders. I have another objection. I consider it as opening an objectionable source of revenue. I consider it objectionable to draw revenue from such a traffic. Are we not told in a loud tone, that it involves a violation of every principle of moral obligation; that it is a crying sin which calls for the vengeance of Heaven? Are we not told on this very floor, that it is so black a sin as ought to induce us to expect signal vengeance? Well—After these things are said and reiterated, will gentlemen contend that this is a proper source of revenue? What! Draw resources for the support of a great state from acts which are declared to be sins against Heaven? If this be correct, then may we go on with this as a precedent, and take the whole catalogue of crimes, and draw revenue from every oath that is broken, and every felony that is perpetrated! Thus by taxing every crime, we shall support the government by the commission of crimes. In my opinion, the adoption of a law or resolution to the effect of that on your table, will fix a stain on the records of this House, and on the character of the nation, at which our posterity will blush, and for which we, in our moments of cool reflection, will have ample cause to condemn ourselves.
There are other points which might be noticed; but as they are such as already have been dwelt on, or are familiar to the minds of the members, I will not detain the committee by any remarks on them, but I will conclude by observing, that so far as respects myself, I will give this resolution a more hearty negative than I have ever before given in my life. (TO BE CONTINUED.)
WASHINGTON CITY.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5.
The memorial of the Merchants of Baltimore, the commencement of which is given in our paper of to-day, merits the attention of the reader. It may not perhaps shed new light on the interesting subject it treats; but it presents it to the apprehension of the reader in a more popular dress than has yet been given it. At the same time that it brings the subject down to the level of a common understanding, it involves no sacrifice of energy or elegance of diction. Indeed as a composition it merits high commendation. We understand that it comes from the pen of Mr. Pinckney, attorney general of the state of Maryland.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
MONDAY, FEB. 3.
Mr. Nicholson presented a memorial from Messrs. Montgomery and Stevens, witnesses on the part of the prosecution on the trial of judge Chase, praying a compensation for their travel and attendance, which was referred to the committee of Claims.
Mr. Quincy presented a memorial from the merchants of Boston, representing the aggressions committed on the trade and neutral rights of the U. S. and concluding with suggesting the propriety of a special mission to the court of London.
Referred to the committee of the whole on the state of the union.
Mr. Crowninshield, from the committee of Commerce and manufactures, made a detailed report on the petition of Francis Amory, which was referred to the committee of the whole House.
A petition from William Lambert was presented, and referred to the committee of Claims.
Mr. J. Clay presented a petition from the measurers of salt and coal in the city of Philadelphia, praying for additional compensation for their services, which was referred to the committee of Claims.
Mr. Gregg, from the committee on public lands, made a report on the petition of F. Messonnier, praying either a donation of land, or an extension of the usual time of payment therefor, to aid him in the cultivation of the vine. The report is unfavorable not only to the prayer of this individual case, but likewise to the principle on which it is founded.
The House immediately took the report into consideration, and concurred in it without division.
A bill was received from the Senate, making a further appropriation for the support of a library. The bill appropriates, in addition to the unexpended balance of a former appropriation, the yearly sum of 1,000 dollars for five years, to be applied under the direction of a joint committee of three members of the Senate and three members of the House of Representatives to be appointed every session.
Referred to a committee of the whole to-morrow.
A bill was likewise received from the Senate to repeal in part the fourth section of an act to authorise the grants of land to the French inhabitants of Gallipolis, and for other purposes therein mentioned. This bill repeals so much of the act referred to as imposes the condition of actual settlement.
Referred to the committee on the public lands.
On motion of Mr. Leib, the House went into a committee of the whole—Mr. Gregg in the chair—on the report of a select committee making extra allowances to certain officers of the House for extra services rendered during the last session.
The resolution authorises the payment of 300 dollars to the clerk, 200 dollars to William Lambert, Josias W. King, the serjeant at arms, the door keeper and the assistant door-keeper, each, and 50 dollars to Alexander Spalding and John Phillips each.
On motion of Mr. Findley, 100 dollars were allowed to James Laurie, chaplain.
After a short debate the resolution was agreed to—Ayes 47—Noes 42.
The committee then rose, and the House took up their report, and concurred in the resolution as amended, Yeas 60—Nays 55.
A message was received from the President of the U. S. enclosing a letter from the governor of South Carolina, stating the cession to the U. S. of certain sites for forts, &c. on certain conditions.
Referred to the committee of the whole on the state of the union.
A message was likewise received from the President of the U. S. laying before the two Houses, for the exercise of their constitutional powers as to providing the means for fulfilling them, six Indian treaties for the extinguishment of Indian rights to lands within the U. S.
The President stated that the Senate had advised the ratification of these treaties, viz.
1. Treaty with the Wyandots, &c.
2. With the Wyandots, &c.
3. With the Delawares.
4. With the Chickasaws.
5. With the Cherokees.
6. With the Creeks.
Referred to the committee of Ways and Means.
Mr. J. Randolph said, the House would recollect better than he did, for he was not present at the time, the very important resolution referred on the motion of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gregg) whom he saw in his place, to the committee of the whole on the state of the union. It was no part of his purpose at this time to discuss the merits of that resolution; and it was still further from his purpose to throw any impediment, or create any delay in bringing forward that discussion; the more so, as he considered the whole country south of the seat of government, and more particularly that part of the country in which he resided, decidedly interested in a speedy and prompt reception or rejection of the proposition. Indeed such was his opinion of the necessity of its being speedily acted upon, that as soon as he saw the resolution which had been offered, which was not until Friday when it was laid on their table, the first suggestion of his mind was to move the going immediately into a committee of the whole on it; as those gentlemen, with whom he had the honor of holding personal and political intercourse would testify. But a more mature reflection had convinced him that before the resolution could receive that ultimate decision, which he trusted it would receive, the House stood in need of material information, which, however it might be in the possession of this or that individual, was not possessed by the body of the House. His object in addressing the House was to obtain this information from the proper authority, from the head of a department—which was the only way in which information of a satisfactory nature, such as ought to influence the decision of the House, ought to be obtained.
Mr. J. Randolph then submitted the following resolution.
Resolve, That the secretary of the treasury be directed to lay before this House a statement of the exports and imports of the U. S. to and from Great Britain and Ireland, and the American colonies of the same, for the two last years, distinguishing the colonial trade, from that of the mother country, and specifying the various articles of export and import and the amount of duties payable on the latter.
Mr. Smith expressed himself in favor of the resolution, and observed that the species of information called for had not been received by the House later than 1803.
Mr. Crowninshield was of opinion that it would be best to extend the resolution so as to embrace the British provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the provinces beyond the cape of Good Hope.
A conversation of some length ensued between Messrs. Crowninshield, Bidwell and Alston on the one side; and Messrs. J. Randolph and J. Clay on the other on amending the resolution.
The former gentlemen were for amending the resolution so as to embrace a period of peace as well as war, and to obtain information from "all the dependencies of Great Britain"—which the latter gentlemen opposed on various grounds, one of which was that if this additional information were desirable it could be obtained by a distinct resolution.
On Mr. Crowninshield's motion to amend the resolution, so as to extend it to "British dependencies," generally, the House divided—Ayes 43—Noes 67.
Mr. Nicholson suggested the propriety of adding the following words to the resolution, in which the mover acquiescing, they were incorporated into it.
And also a statement showing in detail the quantity and value of the like articles of import brought into the U. S. from other nations respectively, with the rate and amount of duty thereon.
When the resolution, thus modified, was agreed to without a division.
Mr. Crowninshield then moved the following resolution. He said, in substance it was the same with the amendment which he had proposed to the resolution of the gentleman from Virginia.
Resolved, That the secretary of the treasury be directed to lay before this House, a statement of the amount of the exports and imports to and from the British dependencies other than those of America for the last two years.
This resolution was likewise agreed to without a division.
On motion of Mr. Stanford the House resolved itself into a committee of the whole on the bill altering the time for holding the circuit court for the district of North Carolina.
After the blanks were filled, Mr. Macon offered a new section for increasing the salary of the district judge of North Carolina from 1,500 to 2,000 dollars.
After debate, this motion was lost by a great majority, as were other motions, successively made, to allow a salary of 1800, 1700, and 1600 dollars.
The committee rose, and reported the bill, and the House ordered it to a third reading to-morrow.
TUESDAY, Feb. 4.
The Speaker laid before the House a letter from the governor of Orleans, covering a petition from the regents of the university of that territory, praying a donation of lands.
Referred to the committee on the public lands.
Mr. Gregg called for the order of the day on a resolution offered by him to repeal so much of an act as authorises the appropriation of lands to the Yazoo claimants.
Mr. Smith moved to postpone the consideration of this resolution to Monday week, that in the mean time the national business might be transacted, undisturbed by the irritation which this subject generally gave rise to.
Mr. Alston declared himself in favor of a compromise by commissioners. If this course should be disagreed to, he would have no objection to agree to the resolution offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. Gregg trusted the motion for postponement would not prevail. The resolution had been submitted very early in the session. The mover had waived calling it up to this day that the national business might be first attended to. In this business the House had progressed to a point, at which it appeared convenient to take up the resolution. Information had been required, which would not probably be received for some days. In the interim a decision might be had on the resolution. The subject had been so long before the House, and had been so fully discussed, that there did not appear to be occasion for much debate, nor did he think the irritation alluded to by his colleague, would take place. He hoped, if the subject was entered upon, the discussion would be conducted with that prudence and temper that were essential to the discovery of truth.
The motion was agreed to—Ayes 65. The House went into committee of the whole, Mr. VARNUM in the chair, on the bill respecting bonds given by marshals.
After amending the same the committee rose, and the House ordered the bill to a third reading.
On the motion of Mr. Sloan the House went into a committee of the whole on the bill imposing a duty on flaves imported into the United States—Mr. JOHN C. SMITH in the Chair.
A variety of motions were made amendatory of the bill, which shall be given in a more detailed view of the proceedings. We shall at present confine ourselves to a concise notice of those most material.
A motion made by Mr. GREGG, requiring the duty to be paid at the time of entry, was agreed to—Ayes 54—Noes 24.
Mr. J. RANDOLPH moved, with the view of getting rid of the business, that the committee should rise.
The motion was supported by Messrs. J. Randolph and Holland, and opposed by Messrs. Smith, Fisk, Sloan and Southard; and disagreed to—Ayes 42—Noes 61.
Mr. BIDWELL moved an amendment limiting the imposition of the duty to the 11th day of January 1808.
Mr. SLOAN spoke against the amendment, which was agreed to—Ayes 55—Noes 27.
Mr. BIDWELL then offered a new section prohibiting the importation of flaves into the United States after the 1st day of January 1808.
Mr. BIDWELL supported, and Messrs. J. Clay and Dana opposed this section, which was disagreed to—Ayes 17.
Mr. D. R. WILLIAMS proposed a new section prohibiting the introduction, after the passage of this act, into the territories of the United States, of flaves hereafter imported into the United States.
After a short debate on this motion, the committee rose, reported progress, and asked leave to sit again.
Mr. J. Randolph opposed leave being given them to sit again; and Messrs. Jackson and Smith supported it; when the question was taken at a late hour, and leave given—Ayes 73.
New Orleans, Dec. 21.
Yesterday being the anniversary of the cession of Louisiana to the United States, was observed with sensations truly gratifying; at sun rise a federal salute was fired by one of our forts; at noon, the several volunteer corps met under arms, and performed evolutions, which would not disgrace a veteran troop; after which several officers, military and civil, attended at the government House, (where a sumptuous collation was served,) but the governor being absent prevented our fellow citizens testifying to him their joy on the occasion.
The day was concluded with several public and private balls, and a play at the theatre in honor of the day.
TO BE SOLD, TWO TRACTS OF LAND,
ONE containing 103 acres, the other 26 acres, adjoining each other, and are from 3 to 4 miles from Alexandria in the county of Fairfax and state of Virginia. The aforesaid land is bounded on the old Leesburg road, just above captain Stacomb's and joins the lands of Benjamin Dulaney and Carlisle Whiting, and will be sold pursuant to a deed of trust given to the subscribers from a certain John Withers to secure the payment of a debt due to Jonathan and Mahion Schoeffel. The above lands will be offered at private sale until the 18th day of February, inst. and if not sold by that day they will be sold at the Coffee House in Alexandria on the 21st day of February at public auction for cash. The sale to commence at 3 o'clock, P. M.
ANDREW SCHOEFIELD, THOMAS COOK, } Trustees. February 5—8t
PARTNERSHIP DISSOLVED.
THE partnership existing between Daniel Rahine, Michael Conrad, & John Conrad, booksellers, trading under the firm of Rapine, Conrad, & Co. was dissolved on the 1st of January last by mutual consent. All those to whom they stand indebted are requested to render their accounts for settlement, and those who are indebted to said firm it is hoped will speedily pay their respective accounts to Daniel Rapine, by whom the business will be continued as heretofore on Capitol Hill where
HE HAS FOR SALE, JUST RECEIVED,
American Annals; or a chronological history of America from its discovery in 1492 to 1806, by Abel Holmes. D. D.
A Northern Summer; or travels round the Baltic, through Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and part of Germany, in the year 1804 by John Carr, esq. author of the "Stranger in France." &c. &c.
Letters from Europe, during a tour through Switzerland and Italy, in the years 1801 & 1802, by Mr. Sanford of Pennsylvania, in 2 vols.
An enquiry into the various sources of the usual forms of summer and autumnal diseases in the U. S. and the means of preventing them, by Benjamin Rush. M. D. &c. &c.
Sketches of trials in Ireland for high treason, including the speeches of Mr. Curran at length; to which are prefixed, a brief sketch of the history of Ireland, with a biographical account and likenesses of Mr. Curran.
WAR IN DISGUISE; or the frauds of Neutral Flags. Feb. 5—
The Subscriber will dispose of, at private SALE, a few articles of Household Furniture, among which, are a Large Mahogany Secretary and Book Case, a Side Board, and a pair of Card Tables. WM. KILTY.
February 5—6t
WHEREAS my wife Margaret and I have agreed to part by mutual consent, I do hereby caution any person from trusting her on my account as I am determined to pay no debts of her contracting from the date hereof.
WILLIAM BROOKS. Feb. 5—3t
I BEG the attention of the reader to take notice of the reports circulated in Montgomery county, are false and malicious, and not one word of truth in them. The first report was, that I had made over all my property to my son Matthew in Kentucky, and was recorded in Montgomery county, for fear of Thomas Orme. The second was that I had published Thomas Orme in the public papers, and the 3rd was that my son Laurence had altered a figure in a certificate for the weight of hay. Now the world may plainly see that there is nothing left undone that could be done with money & tongues, I will now state to the public how the business was transacted—the third day after the decision of Thomas Orme and myself, there was while I was at court at my house a gentleman who I never saw, and he said he was from the city at the distance of 14 or 15 miles with a pretence to purchase all my hay, that was I suppose to get some advantage of him or some one of the family, and after I heard what they were about to do, I called on the hay weigher in the presence of two young gentlemen for the examination of his books, if they may be so called, where we found nothing but some half sheets of paper in the public streets and in the hay box to the liberty of any person who would wish to see them; upon examination we found the weight of the wagon the first time 1420, the 2nd 1430, and the 3rd time 1420, which happened all in a few days of each other, & on the day it weighed 1420 in the city, it only weighed 1425 in George town, which was weighed for one Mr. Livre, but he could not take it in, Mr. Simms seeing the load of hay hot it, and sent it on to the city which was the cause of it being weighed twice in one day, and I have the receipts to shew both from him and Newton. Now if any man keeping such books, and being guilty of so many mistakes, I will ask, can any dependence be placed in him, or any other person, when one man would say he would give a thousand pounds, and another would say he would give a thousand dollars to have him punished the gentleman whose character has been represented to stand so fair, had better have kept his thousand pounds to give to Mrs. Tole's Nuges, which she left in his hands for them, and he withheld it from, and do suppose the separate answer to the bill of comp account and the deed of a number of tracts of land contained in one deed, and the different assignments produced from record bears hard on his mind, which I mean to produce to the next court in the district of Columbia, and it plainly shews his anxiety by coming into court & bringing the business forward; I shall certainly meet him in his own way, and if he wants satisfaction he must meet me in my way and as for the other gentleman he has better kept his thousand dollars to pay his creditors, for he has surely forgot the so failing bills that was made in Bladenburg or he would not have interested himself so much, for I have heard it for an old saying, and I believe it to be true, the more you will any thing that is filthy, the more it will smear. WILLIAM LODGE. Feb 5—3t.
WASHINGTON CITY. BOARDING HOUSE. MRS. THOMPSON,
RESPECTFULLY informs the Members of Congress and others, that having taken Two of the six Buildings, she is prepared for genteel accommodation of a number of Ladies and Gentlemen, as transient boarders or by the year. Those who honor her with their custom, will find it an eligible spot, situated half way between the President's house and George Town; dry, healthy, and convenient to the Public Offices. She has apartments for servants, excellent stables and coach houses, and will spare no pains to give general satisfaction. November 25—

Wanted to hire, during the session of Congress, a sober steady man to drive a carriage—apply at the office of the Nation Intelligence.
Country of Washington, Feb. 3, 1806. CAME to the plantation of the subscriber about the 27th October, 1805. A Red COW about 10 years old, has a white spot on each flank, and her left hip fluted—The owner is desired to come, prove property, pay charges and take her away. THOMAS STILLINGS. Feb. 3—13
NOTICE. In the town of Paris, Virginia, at the uppermost house on the farboard side going down street the subscriber has opened a quiet and peaceable house for the entertainment of travellers and drovers, and right opposite on the farboard side he has opened a grocery store, where he has all kinds of grain to sell by the barrel or by the bushel or smaller quantity, also a quantity of most excellent timothy and clover hay by the stack or by the hundred or smaller quantity at the most reduced prices. PETER GLASSCOCK, Februray 3—w3t AN ASSISTANT TO AN ACADEMY.
WANTED a respectable person to superintend the arithmetic and writing departments at the Western Academy, Washington city, a liberal salary will be given to a person well qualified for discharging the duties of the above situation. Apply personal or address by letter post paid, to Mr. WHITE, Principal teacher of the above Academy. February 3— District of Columbia, Washington county, to wit.
ON the petition of WILLIAM R. KING an insolvent debtor, confined in the prison of Washington county for debt, notice is hereby given to the creditors of the said Wm R. King that on Monday the 10th day of Feb. next at the capital in the court room, at the hour of 9 o'clock A. M. the oath prescribed by the act of Congress, entitled, "An act for the relief of insolvent debtors within the district of Columbia," will be administered to the said King and a trustee appointed unless sufficient cause be then and there shown to the contrary. Ordered that this notice be published in the National Intelligencer, in the Washington Federalist and in one newspaper printed in Alexandria, three times in each paper before that day; and in a Baltimore newspaper and in a Philadelphia newspaper once in each paper before the 3rd day of Feb. next. By order of the hon. Wm. Cranch, esq. assistant judge of the circuit court of the district of Columbia. WM. BRENT, Clk. Feb. 3—2t.
D. PETER NOTICES to such gentlemen as have heretofore made consignments to Mr. William Murdoch, London, or may in future be disposed to do so, that he is duly authorized to conduct his business at this place, and make such advances upon shipments as the prices in Europe will justify. George Town, Jan. 24—2t
FOR SALE. ALL that tract of land which I purchased from Mrs. Mary Jenkins and on which I now reside lying in St. Mary's county on the Choptank by three miles from St. Inigoes creek, containing 700 acres more or less. The advantages of this land are numerous. 400 acres are in wood abounding in oak, locust and poplar. The bay shore affords an inexhaustible source of excellent manure in the sea weed or sea far as it is commonly called which is at all seasons thrown up in great quantities and in a dry state, lying immediately along side of the fields. No place can be better adapted than this for stock of all kinds. The woods yield abundance of acorns, and it abounds in grounds well calculated for meadows that produce great quantities of grain. The improvements of this place are likewise considerable. There are on it a good brick dwelling house, every necessary out house, a small water mill, and two tenements now under rent, besides all necessary fencing in good repair. Moreover there are many convenient springs of good water that do not fail in the driest seasons. Its situation renders it almost superfluous to mention that it lies convenient to the Baltimore, Norfolk and Alexandria markets. This valuable tract of land I will sell for one 4th cash and the remainder in one two and three years. WILFRED M. NINING. Great Mill, Jan. 31—3t&wtf
By order of the Orphan's Court of Prince George's county, will be held at public sale, on Tuesday 11th of next month (at Mr. Blisha Jones's near Broad Creek) part of the personal property of Joseph Gill, deceased; Consisting of one negro man, some valuable milch cows and one horse. The above property will be sold on a credit of six months, with interest from the day of sale, the purchaser or purchasers giving bond with approved security—Sale to commence at 12 o'clock, if fair, if not the next fair day. MARY GILL, Administratrix. January 15—3w
BOLTING CLOTHS. RECEIVED a general assortment of warranted bolting cloths of Oliver Evans of Philadelphia, and have constantly for sale at my store in Bridge street, George Town Columbia. WM. MORGAN. 1st month 1, 1806—2w&w ADVERTISEMENT. THIS is to give notice that the subscriber has obtained from the Orphan's court of Washington county in the district of Columbia, Letters Testamentary on the personal estate of Stanley Byus, late of Washington county aforesaid deceased; all persons having claims against the said deceased, are hereby required to exhibit the same with the vouchers thereof to the subscriber at or before the 11th day of June 1806, they may otherwise by law be excluded from all benefit of the said estate. All persons indebted to the said estate are required to make immediate payment to T. H. GIL, ISS. Executor. Washington City, Dec. 11—w2m
CHARLES H. VARDEN, MERCHANT TAYLOR, NEW JERSEY AVENUE, NEAR THE CAPITOL. Respectfully informs the gentlemen of the District of Columbia that in addition to his former stock he has received by late arrivals at Philadelphia from London a choice assortment of superfine cloths, single and double milled cassimeres, Bennetts patent cord, woolverteen and waistcoating, fancy and black silk molekins, all of superior quality and newest fashion, plain and stripe black velvets, constitution cord, knap coatings, flushing flannels, &c. &c. with a variety of other articles in his line, and he pledges himself, to those gentlemen who shall favor him with their orders to complete them in the newest style of fashion. N B. Ladies habits, regimentals, navy uniforms, made in the most fashionable manner. Washington Dec 12—tf
The whole flock of the Washington Tontine, not being subscribed by others before the 31st December last, the remainder was on that day subscribed by the lot owners and placed on lives supposed to be well selected. This stock is now in my hands for sale at 52 DOLLARS per share the purchaser taking choice of the lives selected. The price will be raised from time to time, as the increasing value of the flock will justify. Apply at the Tontine Office. JOSEPH FORREST. Jan. 31—3t
Twenty Dollars Reward, WILL be given for apprehending negro FANNY a very low and tolerable lusty woman about 38 years of age, but from appearance older, very black and much marked with the small pox which occasioned a small defect in one of her eyes, has lost one of her foreteeth, she is very artful and cunning, having procured a free pass, and passes by the name of Charity Shorter; she was formerly the property of John Chittenden of this county, and was run away for near eight years, was apprehended and sold to me in 1803 and was hired by me to a certain Thomas King of Prince George's county, from whom she absconded in Oct. 1804 and has been lurking, I do suppose near where she was hired or gone to Calvert county where I have understood her husband has gone. The above reward will be given to any person who will lodge her in jail so that I get her again, or deliver her to Mr. Samuel Speake city of Washington, or to the subscriber living in Charles county Maryland, near Port Tobacco. P. S. I forewarn any person from harboring or employing said woman, at their peril. MASSY EMMONS. Nov. 27—tf
City of Washington, Sept. 9, 1805. Several persons under the impression that the public lots in this city are to be disposed of in future by public sales only, having made enquiries when the next sale will probably take place, we are requested to state that those lots may at any time be purchased at private sale of the Superintendent of the City. Sept. 9—tf
ON a liberal credit. THE subscriber will dispose of at private sale, his estate called Chichester, lying on the eastern branch, immediately opposite the city of Washington. This tract of land containing 697 acres is laid off in lots from 23 to 144 acres for the convenience of purchasers. Plats of the estate and the terms of sale are in the hands of colonel Hanlon at the navy yard, and Charles Wayman of George Town. The lots will be shown by Mr. Wedden, living on the premises, near the Eastern Branch bridge. ANTHONY ADDISON. Barnaby, 12th June 1805—tf
Fresh Garden Seeds, &c. THEOPHILUS HOLT respectfully informs his friends and the public that he has received from London per ship Mars to Baltimore, and for sale, a very extensive assortment of fresh Garden Seeds, garden tools, grass seeds, bird seed. Sped peas and flour of mustard by the pound. He also has for sale a variety of bulbous flower roots, fruit trees, flowering shrubs, Lombardy poplars, &c. &c. The customary allowance made to Gardeners and those who purchase to sell again. Washington City, Dec. 13—2wtf P. S. An assortment of the garden seeds are for sale at Dr. Ott's George Town.
25 DOLLARS REWARD, Will be given for apprehending a negro man named LEN he is 37 or 40 years of age, 5 feet 8 inches high or thereabout, and of a very dark complexion, with short wool and crooked eyes; he is also pockmarked and flammers very much; he formerly belonged to major Chew, living at the head of Herring Bay, who disposed of him to Mr. Wm. Campbell near Fredericktown Maryland; Dr. Manuel Kent who lives at Lower Marlbo, purchased him of Mr. Campbell and sold him to the subscriber. LEN was seen, during the months of April and May last, near Lower Marlbo and it is presumed that he is now near one of the abovenamed places. I will give FIFTEEN DOLLAR on his being secured in jail and information given to me so that I may get him immediately, or the above reward if he be delivered to me at the Navy Yard in the city of Washington. NICHOLAS VOSS. Nov. 22—2wtf
ELIAS B. CALDWELL, ATTORNEY AT LAW. HAS removed his Office, to the house lately occupied by Mr. LAW, on Capitol Hill. Washington. July 26—tf
BOARDING & LODGING. THREE or FOUR gentlemen may be accommodated with Boarding and Lodging, on moderate terms, by applying at Mrs. Sweeney's in F Street nearly opposite the Office of Discount and Deposit. January 3—1wtf
Twenty Dollars Reward. AARON, a mulatto man about 43 years old, left the city of Washington early in October, and was seen on the road leading from Alexandria to Leesburg in company with a black woman, who I am informed is the property of some person in the vicinity of this place—he is about 5 feet 10 inches high, has straight hair, very bald in one of his eyes brows (I think it is the left) near his nose, there is an intended scar occasioned by a stroke he received, which fractured the bone in that place, and whenever he has it in his power never fails to drink to excess. It is probable that he has gone to Jefferson or Berkeley county in Virginia, where he formerly resided, and from thence will endeavor to go to Kentucky. The above reward will be paid to any person who will have him committed to jail, and give information thereof to the subscriber in George Town, district of Columbia. EDWARD GANTT. Nov. 11—tf
A BARGAIN. THE subscriber offers for sale the farm he now occupies, containing near 300 acres with or without the stock thereon. It is distant from the cities of Georgetown and Washington, about five miles, and well known as a healthy situation. There is much fine fruit orchard, and bounds with springs, affording good water as in the United States, a considerable proportion of the land has been in clover, and from thirty to forty acres fit for the scythe the ensuing summer. It is now in a very improving state, being altogether clear of broom ledge, and from 40 to 50 acres ploughed and prepared for a spring crop, and from 30 to 40 acres well set with wheat and rye—some part of the land is calculated for tobacco; and plaster of paris answers well with it all. The dwelling house and other improvements may with small repairs, be rendered very comfortable—From its vicinity to two growing cities many advantages result in supplying the markets. A purchaser may calculate on a good bargain, particularly if an early application be made. Some part of the purchase money will be required in cash or approved negotiable paper; the remainder rendered easy—or negroes received in payment. The subscriber or William Scary residing on the farm will show it when required, and the terms made known by application to Mr. John Thompson, George Town, or Dr. Wm. Thornton, Washington. Isaac Pollock. J. n. 29—eptf
Fruit Hill, Some Lands calculated for the culture of cotton, Indian corn and small grain, situated on a navigable river in the healthiest part of the state of Georgia, will also be sold on reasonable terms or exchanged for negroes. J. n. 29—eptf
LUMBER Wanted Immediately. PROPOSALS sealed up, post paid & addressed to Robert Underwood, of this city, will be received until the fourth Monday in the present month, at which precisely the lowest return on which the proposer is willing to contract for supplying the following described lumber to be delivered at the Tiber creek in the city and which is designed for improving the navigation of said creek, so as to admit vessels of one hundred tons and upwards to pass up at least 3000 feet from its junction with the Potomac viz 4 or 500 Red cedar or White Oak piles, from 15 to 18 feet long, capable of requiring 7 inches at the butt end, and to designate the price of each kind of timber. Four hundred White Oak Poles, 20 feet long, to square 3 1/2 or 4 inches at the top end. Thirty thousand feet of 2 inch pitch pine plank, from 10 to 12 feet long. Washington city, Dec. 16—tf
FOR SALE. IN the county of Albemarle Virginia, 971 acres of land lying on both sides of Hardaway river, generally adapted to small grain corn and tobacco with a great abundance of meadow land. About four hundred acres are cleared most of which are low grounds; and it is perhaps capable of the highest improvement of any land in this part of the world by having an inexhaustible source of rich mud or soil that has been accumulating for ages. The situation is fine, healthy, convenient to two tobacco warehouses, the court house and several merchant mills and in a very respectable neighborhood. Hardaway river is capable of being made navigable into James river from seven miles above this tract for which there is an act of assembly. There is on the land a large two story dwelling house, almost new and other convenient houses—at about half a mile from which, there is also an old dwelling house, kitchen and store house, that may be made with some repairs capable of accommodating a genteel family. There is also on the premises between 90 and 100 acres brick well burnt which will be disposed of on reasonable terms. The payments required will be one third cash and the remainder at two equal annual instalments. Any person wishing to purchase or view the said land will apply to the subscriber living on the premises. CHARLES WINGFIELD. January 1—6w
Thirty Dollars Reward, FOR apprehending and securing in jail negro J. COB who is a Jew well made fellow, about 25 years of age, complexion rather black, the not deep, has a pleasant countenance, is stout made about the shoulders and breast with small legs, has a stoop in his speech and cannot make a quick reply, when spoken to without shutting his eyes or being in motion, which is very observable, his clothing was blue negro cotton jacket and overalls, ozanabug shirt, and wool hat, though they are subject to change, he was late the property of Richard B. Beall of Fauquier county, Virginia, and eloped about the 6th of November last. The constables and others of the city of Washington George Town Alexandria, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Norfolk are requested to look out for the said run away slave as he above reward will be immediately paid them on the terms specified by JOHN KEDGLIE. City of Washington, Dec. 16—2wtf
Twenty Dollars Reward. WILL be given for apprehending and securing in jail a young Mulatto man slave named ANDREW. He was hired by me last year to Mr. Joseph Thomas who keeps the road ferry to Alexandria, and absconded from that place about the latter end of August last. He is about 23 years of age, 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, lusty and well made, has short curly hair, and is frequently subject to have several large pimples on his face. He is reckoned to be a terrible fellow of an easy agreeable address for a man in his low sphere of life. As he has not been heard of by me since his closment, I suspect he has had the address to ship himself as a freeman on board some vessel either at Alexandria or Baltimore. Whoever takes him up and secures him in jail shall receive from me the above reward, as soon as due information thereof is given to me or to Dr. N. P. Caufin at Port Tobacco. G. B. CAUSIN. Maryland Charles County, January 29—tf
Iron Works and Mills FOR SALE. THE Subscribers will sell by private bargain those valuable iron works, mills and mill seats, situate at or near the mouth of Antioch creek in Washington county, Md. within less than half a mile of Potomac river, together with all the lands in Mid. thereunto belonging, supposed to be between 7000 and 8000 acres, a sufficient quantity of which, for the use of the works, is rich grass land. Also, all the negroes, (several of whom are skillful workmen) flock, and other property, personal or mixed, appertaining to the said estate. Also, all the property in Virginia belonging to the same, consisting of a small tract of land on the river nearly opposite to the iron works of Denton, acques, which is known to contain iron ore in abundance—a part of the Keep Tryde Ore bank lately recovered, which is distant from the furnace at the Anti Batum works about four miles. Several lots in Shepherd's town, improved and unimproved; with the rights of the company, (which though now only conditional will be made complete) to the ferry across Potomac below Anti Batum, and the farm to which the same is annexed, containing between 150 and 200 acres of very good land— together with all rights and privileges to other ores, landing places, and conveniences held and claimed by the late firm of Richard Henderson, and Co. making in the whole one of the most valuable estates in America for carrying on iron works of every kind, and for the manufacturing of flour on an extensive scale by a mill, lately built and now in complete order for that purpose, from which the Potomac can give water carriage to the towns below, the land carriage to George Town being not more than 60 miles, and for an advantageous sale of iron, the very populous country and towns near the works afford a ready market. Possession may be had on the 1st of January next or at any reasonable time thereafter. For further description of the property, and of quantity and quality of lands with title papers, any person disposed to purchase it, referred to Mr. John Kitchie at the work, and for terms of sale to James M. Logan, near George Town and in Stuart of the house of Stuart and Beall in that place. Dumfries, Vir. 2d Nov 1805. ALEX. B. BERSON } Executors J. M. LINGAN, } of Richard JOHN HENDERSON, } Henderson. WM. STUART. Jan. 29—epiot
STELLE'S HOTEL & CITY TAVERN. THE Subscriber takes this method of thanking his friends and the public for their favors while on the Capitol square and begs leave to acquaint them that he has taken the Spacious Hotel lately erected by Mr. Carroll, near the Capitol. The hotel being above one hundred feet in front, and containing fifty rooms enables the subscriber to offer every accommodation to members of Congress and travellers which can be expected in a public house. PONTIUS D. STELLE. Washington City, March 25—tf N. B.—P. D. S. will rent the house lately occupied by him on the adjoining square.
WANTED, A WOMAN that understands plain cooking and house work; likewise a GIRL of about 14 years of age to take care of children—none need apply but those who can bring unexceptionable recommendations. Enquire at the and house from the west end of the Six Buildings and at this office. Nov. 27—tf
PHILADELPHIA IRON FOUNDRY. THE subscriber has taken the Philadelphia Iron Foundry, situate in Southwark between Front and Second and Queen and Christian streets, for the convenience of executing his own castings for his steam engines, &c. But proposes to execute any orders that he may be favored with in that line; either for engines, mill-works, sugar-rollers, rolling Slitting Mills Forge Work, Cranks, Guddoons, Cogwheels, Kettles, Pans, &c. in short all castings of iron, either in sand or loam—He wishes to draw the attention of millers to their own interest, by adopting for all the running gears of a mill, cast iron cog wheels, of spur and bevel gear, they will come cheaper in the first instance and last for ages. He means to have made by an experienced workman, a set of the most perfect moulds from which all the necessary movements for a rolling reel, and the machinery for merchant flour mills may be produced. He will undertake to assist in the arrangement of the suitable sizes of wheels to produce the proper motions, upon being informed of the number of revolutions per minute, and number of cogs in the wheel, by which the machinery is to be put in motion. He makes Steam Engines on his new and simple principles, for any purpose for which they may be wanted; their cost will be about half that of the old construction and consume less fuel. He keeps for sale as usual, Stone Coals, Burr Millstones, and bolting cloths of the best quality. Application to be made either at the Furnace or his Counting house, near the corner of Ninth and Market streets. OLIVER EVANS. Jan. 1. 2w&w
LAND FOR SALE. DESIROUS of removing to Kentucky the subscriber will sell his estate at the Falls of Rappahannock, on which he resides containing 1031 acres—being within one mile of the two improving towns of Frederickburg and Falmouth and several manufacturing mills, independent of which it is believed that few tracts of land in Virginia embrace within their boundaries as many real advantages. FRANCIS HORTON, near Frederickburg. January 24—2w&w
DR. MAGRUDER, HAS for sale, an extensive assortment of drugs and medicine, patent medicines, shop furniture, confectionary, perfumes, spices, die stuffs, oil, paints, window glass, glaziers diamonds, books and Stationery, paper hangings, &c. among them are the best yellow and red bark, fat petre, Glauber's salts, calomel, jalap, tartar emetic, magnesia, sago, tapioca, arrow root, pearl barley, squa tortis, oil of vitriol, Hooper's, Anderson's, and Whitehead's essence of mustard, Lee's New London and Windham bilious pills, British oil, essence peppermint, Solomon's anti impetigines or balm of gilead, Godfrey's cordial, Bateman's and Jewitt's drops, assa's eiver, Ching's and Hamilton's worm destroying lozenges, essential salt of lemons, Harison's oil, Church's cough drops, Turlington's balsam, quinta essentia, folis or gold tincture, essence worm seed, Steer's opodeldoc, court plaster, tooth powder, and brushes, Naples and Windsor soap, pomatum, essence of burgamot, lemons and oranges, eau de luce, nutmegs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, white mustard seed, long pepper, furgeons pocket instruments, clipping and amputating instruments in cases, spring trusses, pearl ashes, logwood, fustic, red wood, madder, a um coppers, Spanish indigo, powdered and fig blue, red and yellow annatto, gold beater skins, best winter strained lamp oil, about six hundred gallons of linseed oil which he will sell cheap by the cask; white lead, yellow ochre, spanish brown, dry and ground in oil, red lead, venetian red, vermilion, Prussian blue, patent green and yellow, blue verditer yellow orpiment, drop lake, Dutch and rose pink, lamp and ivory black, retort and punice stone, black lead, red and white chalk, water colors in boxes, & c. white, turpentine, japan, copal and spirit varnish, camel's hair pencils, printers brushes, silver and gold leaf, Dutch metal, American and Ruff's glue, maccobo, inuff, orange flower water, tamarinds and every article of medicine and paint that is needful to compose a complete assortment, which he is determined to sell at the most reduced prices, especially to those that deal largely—2 by 10 by 12, 12 by 14, 15, 16 and 18, 13 by 18, 14 by 19, 15 by 20 by 22 window glass; the domestic encyclopaedia, Denon's travels in Egypt, Hume's history of England, Lorenzo de Medici, McShems church history, Miller's retrospect detailing the many improvements in science, arts and literature of the eighteenth century, Millot's general history, Entarch's lives, Kotzebue's plays, Johnson's lives of the English poets, quarto bibles with elegant engravings, a variety of religious books and sermons; a complete assortment of English, Latin, Greek and French school books, almanacs, copy and cyphering books, copperplate copies, playing cards, pocket books, timothy and red clover seed, rosin by the barrel, &c. January 8—3t&w6t
Forty Dollars Reward. RAN away from the Subscriber living three miles below Montgomery court house, Maryland, on Thursday the 26th of December last, a likely black fellow named BEN, about 38 years of age, straight and well made, six feet and upwards high, has a small scar in his forehead above the right eye, has remarkable long hair and in plates, if not cut off, had on when he went away a black fur hat, a brown cloth coat, blue cassimere jacket, with black buttons, white cloth overalls, lined with country crocus, white country yarn stockings, and a tolerable good pair of short boots, he is an artful fellow, and has several other suits of cloths, and I make no doubt he will change his clothing and name, and perhaps he may have got a pair. And on the same day ran away from George town, a like negro woman named Letty, the property of Mrs. Charity Wilton, Montgomery county, about thirty years of age, 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high, straight and well made, she has a scar above one of her elbows, she took with her a new blue cloth habit, tinged round the neck, skirts and sleeves with red annel, with fund y other clothing unknown to me. She was brought up a house servant, and hired as a cook to Mr. John Cox of George town. Those negroes were seen together on the evening they made their escape and it is supposed that they have gone together. Whoever takes up and secures the said negroes in any jail, so that we get them again, shall receive the above reward, or twenty dollars for either, and all reasonable expenses paid if brought home. THOMAS CLAGETT. January 24—3w.
ELISHA RIGGS, Has just received by the ship Birmingham from Liverpool, via Baltimore, and other late arrivals, an additional assortment of Seasonable Goods, among them are many Fancy articles, all of which will be sold very low, viz Ladies Pelisses, fancy ribbons, lace sleeves, extra white kid gloves, rich embossed silk, hosiery, Hawkesbury bonnets, figured crapes, ostrich feathers, black laces shades and veils, white and colored cambric muslins, rich damask and green cloth, table cloths, London hats. Also, A quantity of fine twine, faddlery, and hatters trimmings, and a few bales rose blankets. George Town, Jan. 22 wjt
NOTICE: ENOCH SPALDING is appointed Collector of fines for the 1st Legion of the District of Columbia. By order, WM. D. BEALL, Clk. January 13—3w