Entered, according to Act of Congress, May 19, 1851, by

JOHN C. HAMILTON,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York, for the benefit of, and copy right assigned to the

POLITICAL ESSAYS.

MR. FENNO,

For the Gazette of the United States.

July 25, 1792.

The editor of the "National Gazette" receives a salary from government.

Quere. Whether this salary is paid him for translations, or for publications, the design of which is, to vilify those to whom the voice of the people has committed the administration of our public affairs-to oppose the measures of government, and, by false insinuations, to disturb the public peace?

In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand that puts bread in his mouth; but if the man is hired to do it, the case is altered.

It was easy to foresee, when the hint appeared in your Gazette of the 25th July, that the editor of the National Gazette

received a salary from the general government, that advantage would be taken of its want of explicitness and particularity, to make the circumstance matter of merit in Mr. Freneau, and an argument of his independent disinterestedness. Such a turn of the business cannot be permitted to succeed. It is now necessary that the whole truth should be told, and that the real state of the affair should be well understood.

Mr. Freneau, before he came to this city to conduct the National Gazette, was employed by Childs and Swaine, printers of the Daily Advertiser, in New-York, in the capacity of editor or superintendent.

A paper more devoted to the views of a certain party, of which Mr. Jefferson is the head, than any to be found in this city, was wanted. Mr. Freneau was thought a fit instrument; a negotiation was opened with him which ended in the establishment of the National Gazette, under his direction.

Mr. Freneau came here, at once editor of the National Gazette, and clerk for foreign languages in the department of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State; an experiment somewhat new in the history of political manoeuvres in this country: a newspaper instituted by a public officer, and the editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money in the disposal of that officer; an example savoring not a little of that spirit, which, in the enumeration of European abuses, is the continual theme of decla matory censure; an example which could not have been set by the head of any other department, without having long since rung throughout the United States.

Mr. Freneau is not then, as he would have it supposed, the independent editor of a newspaper, who, though receiving a salary from government, has firmness enough to expose its mal-administration he is the faithful and devoted servant of the head of a party, from whose hands he receives the boon. The whole complexion of his paper exhibits a decisive internal evidence of the influence of that patronage under which he acts.

Whether the services rendered by him are equivalent to the compensation he receives, is best known to his employer and himself; there is, however some room to doubt. It is well known

that his employer is, himself, well acquainted with the French language, the only one of which Mr. Freneau is the translator, and it may be a question how often his aid is necessary.

It is somewhat singular, too, that a man acquainted with but one foreign language, engaged in an occupation which it may be presumed, demands his whole time and attention--the editor of a newspaper-should be the person selected as the clerk for foreign languages in the department of the United States for foreign affairs. Could no person be found acquainted with more than one foreign language, and who in so confidential a trust could have been regularly attached to, in the constant employ of the department, and immediately under the eye of the head of it?

But it may be asked-is it possible that Mr. Jefferson, the head of a principal department of the government, can be the patron of a paper, the evident object of which is to decry the government and its measures? If he disapproves of the government itself, and thinks it deserving of his opposition, can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity, and the principles of probity, to hold an office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that opposition? If he disapproves of the leading measures which have been adopted in the course of its administration-can he reconcile it with the principles of delicacy and propriety, to hold a place in that administration, and at the same time to be instrumental in vilifying measures which have been adopted by majorities of both branches of the legislature, and sanctioned by the chief magistrate of the Union?

An answer

These questions would certainly be natural. might be left to the facts which establish the relation between the Secretary of State and the editor of the National Gazette as the text, and to the general tenor of that paper, as the commentary. Let any intelligent man read the paper from the commencement of it, and let him determine for himself whether it be not a paper virulently hostile to the government and its measures. Let him then ask himself whether, considering the connection which has subsisted between the Secretary of State and the editor of that paper, coeval with its first establishment, it be probable that the complexion of the paper is contrary to the views of that officer.

If he wishes for a confirmation of the inference which he cannot fail to draw, as a probable one, let him be informed in ad dition,

1st. That while the Constitution of the United States was depending before the people of this country for their consideration. and decision, Mr. Jefferson, being in France, was opposed to it in some of its most important features, and wrote his objections to some of his friends in Virginia. That he at first went so far as to discountenance its adoption, though he afterwards recommended it, on the ground of expediency in certain contingencies.

2d. That he is the declared opponent of almost all the important measures which have been devised by the government, more especially the provision which has been made for the public debt, the institution of the Bank of the United States, and such other measures as relate to the public credit, and the finances of the United States.

It is proper that these facts should be known, for if the people of the United States believe, that their happiness and their safety are connected with the existence and maintenance of an efficient national or federal government; if they continue to think that which they have created and established worthy of their confidence--if they are willing that the powers they have granted to it should be exercised with sufficient latitude to at tain the ends they had in view in granting them, and to do the essential business of the nation; if they feel an honest pride in seeing the credit of their country, so lately prostrate, elevated to an equal station with that of any nation upon earth; if they are conscious that their own importance is increased by the increased respectability of their country, which from an abject and degraded state, owing to the want of government, has, by the establishment of a wise Constitution, and the measures which have been pursued under it, become a theme for the praise and admiration of mankind; if they experience that their own situation is improved and improving-that commerce and navigation have advanced, that manufactures are progressive-that agriculture is thriving that property is more secure than it was-industry more