be ascribed, not doubting that they will meet with, as they certainly merit, the contempt of every honest and honourable man.

The claim of Lurz now being established and confirmed beyond all controversy, I shall, in my next, offer some observations as to the REWARD to which he is entitled.

P. S.-The lovers of truth and justice will be glad to hear, that, amongst the numerous copies which have been sold of LUTZ's portrait, several have gone to Petersburgh, Vienna, and Berlin; from which latter place I have received a request to publish my Narrative in French as well as English.

Since the above was written, the following excellent article has appeared in the Morning Chronicle, from which my readers will perceive, as I do with great pleasure, that that paper has now made some reparation for its former injustice to Lutz.

INVINCIBLE STANDARD.- From the different Darratives which have been published respecting the Invincible Standard, it appears clearly that Major Stirling, of the 42d regiment, took a French standard, which was afterwards lost. The Narrative published by the officers of the 42d regiment, however, does not state that the standard which Lutz carried to head quarters was the identical standard which Major Stirling had taken, and Sinclair had lost. Perhaps in the confusion, Major Stirling might not have examined it with such accuracy as to be able to identify it. The evidence of Lutz having taken the standard, which he brought to head-quarters, is not in the slightest degree affected by the Narrative of the officers of the 42d. Serjeant Sinclair's assertion, that Lutz picked it up after he himself was wounded, is an absurd conclusion of his own mind, and is not founded on any testimony or evidence whatever. Admitting, however, the standard brought in by Lutz to be that which Major StirTing had previously taken, of which, though it could perhaps be gathered from other circumstances, the narratives afford no evidence, it is very probable that the French soldiers who wounded and cut down Sinclair, seeing a French standard, or indeed any Standard, would take it back. In the one case it was preventing a trophy remaining in the hands of the English; in the other it was taking one from them.It appears that much unnecessary and useless dispute has arisen from the premature credit which was given to the narrative of Sinclair, and founding upon it conclusions totally unsupported by evidence. The 42d regiment, it is proved and admitted, behaved with great gallantry, but their injudicious friends, by ascribing to them the whole glory attached to the capture of the Invincible Standard, as it is called, placed them in a situation which must be unpleasant to them. The mere cireumstance of taking a standard does not of itself prove any superior or exclusive merit in any corps, particularly when movements and attacks are combined. The French, with whom the 42d were engaged, were, it is admitted by their officers, defeated, not merely by their exertions, but by the exertions likewise of some companies of the 8th

and was then taken by Lutz, to Lutz the merit, whatever it is, belongs. It would be idle to enquire what sort of property, or if any property can be created in a standard once taken and then lost, Surely it is absurd to say, that there can be any the most naked and metaphysical species of property formed by the momentous occupation of a thing in battle which may be won and lost fifty times over. A regiment, which, in the beginning of a battle, had taken a piece of cannon, would act very absurdly to claim that cannon if it had been retaken by the enemy, and then taken and kept by another regiment. The merit of having taken the cannon may remain, but it does not in the slightest degree diminish the glory of those who took it a second time. As to the present question, it is of the same kind. It was net saving to the 42d that the standard reached head-quarters. It does appear to have been retaken, and was just as much the property of the enemy as it was before the battle began, but for Lutz and the exertions of the different corps who were engaged, and who aided the 42d, pressed by the superior numbers of the enemy. We see no reason to prefer one regiment to another, neither do we see reason why the 42d regiment should lay any claim to that standard which is now in England, unless they can clearly demonstrate that Lutz picked it up, or rather stole it from Sinclair, the contrary of which is established by the best evidence yet produced.— Morning Chronicle, Feb. 11, 1803.

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

You will now, probably, remember that, after having, in the year 1796, shewn you the fatal effects which must inevitably arise to you from the cession of Louisiana to France, and after having been outrageously abused and reviled by you for so doing, turning from you with that disgust and disdain, which your conduct was well calculated to excite, I foretold not only your present troubles, but the time and manner of their arrival and their operations, concluding with these words: "I also will laugh at your calamity; "I will mock when your fear cometh." Yet, believe me, I do not laugh at your calamity; I do not mock at your fear. With some few exceptions, 1 have long forgiven and forgotten all the injuries, with which the worst of you, in your folly and your madness, endeavoured to load me; while, on the other hand, I cherish the remembrance of all those acts of indulgence and of friendship which I have, in greater abundance than any other person, experienced at American hands. If, in the State of Pennsylvania, there are twenty miscreants, who,

if strict justice had her course, would perish | by me or by my sons, there are hundreds for whom we ought, were it necessary, to lay down our lives. If no man ever had more enemies, no one ever had half so many friends, and these the warmest and most sincere. Never, therefore, does America, and Pennsylvania in particular, come athwart my mind unaccompanied with the best wishes for their prosperity and happi

ness.

With these sentiments it is that I now take up the pen to address you once more on the subject of Louisiana, or rather, of those acts of rigour and injustice, if not of open hostility, which I am more than ever persuaded, you will have to submit to, or to resist, on the part of your new and insolent neighbour.

In 1796, I earnestly laboured to persuade you, that, unless, before a peace took place between England and France, you got the better of your prejudices and formed an alliance with England, that peace would inevitably place the French at the mouth and on the banks of the Mississippi, which would be soon followed by the utter ruin of your Western States, if not by a dissolution of the Union.* The moment the peace came, the cession, or rather the surrender, of the territory in question to France, was announced to the world; and so far my prediction was confirmed. Still, however, you had hopes. It is the great characteristic of all those, who fall by the arms or intrigues of France, to entertain a sort of vague undefined hope, long after all foundation for what is worthy of the name of hope has ceased to exist. You amused ourselves with a notion, that France had no serious intention of settling in Louisiana; or, that, at any rate, she might be wheedled or bribed from her design. Vain imagination! Yet you were told, that negotiations were set on foot for this purpose; an, your minister at Paris really was beard upon the subject, but a hearing was all he obtained. Indeed, to suppose, that France would, except for some immense equivalent, abandon a project, the greatest that even her gigantic ambition ever conceived, and, at the same time, the easiest of execution; to suppose that she would, merely for the sake of retaining your good will, yield, or delay to take possession of, a territory, which must eventually give her the command of North America and the West Indies; to suppose that she would, in one single stipulation, and without half a world in exchange, relinquish her hold on the produce of the United States, the mines of Mexico, and the navigation of

* See the passage alluded to, extracted into Vol. I. p. 199. See the entire Tract in Porcupine's Works, Vol. IV. p. 271.

England, was a stretch of credulity even, I should have thought, far beyond the ample creed of a mercantile American politician. The deception is, however, now at an end; your President has informed you, that Lousiana is to be taken possession of by France, and we, on this side of the ocean, see her armament, for that purpose, ready to quit the ports of one of her allies, with whose present situation it may be well worth your while to familiarize your minds. And here I cannot but recollect, the joy with which you hailed the entrance of the French into Amsterdam! Far be reproach from my heart! but I must ask, if you do not now repent of your folly and injustice? if you do not now anticipate an awful retribution?

But, to make you feel the effects of French fraternity, to give you a foretaste of that which is to come, it has not required the ar rival of a French army in Louisiana, nor even of a French agent at New Orleans. The Spaniards, at whose defeats, while they were opposed to your beloved France, you constantly exulted, are, by the means of those defeats, become the vassals of France, the instruments in her hands, the claws with which she occasionally extends her grasp be-. yond her own physical capacity; these Spaniards, for endeavouring to develope whose subaltern intrigues your government had once the folly to persecute me; * these fallen and despied Spaniards, are now become the rod for the commencement of that flagellation, under which your country is to smart. The Intendant of New Orleans has, it seems, issued an order, that none of your produce shall be introduced into that port, without paying a duty of six per centum ad valorem, and that it shall not be exported except to countries pointed out by the Spanish government. This restriction has, of course, been severely felt. Your agents are flocking home from New Orleans, your merchants trading thither have their vessels sent back empty and their property blocked up, and your cultivators in the four states, whose only out-let is by the mouth of the Mississippi, are clamouring with discontent. And, are you surprized * See Porcupine's Works, Vol. VII. p. 352.

On the 2d Dec. 1802, the following message was transmitted to Congress by the president, relative to the violation of the treaty with Spain.

"Gentlemen, I now transmit a report from the "Sec. of State, with the information requisite in your resolution of the 27th inst. In making "this communication, I deem it proper to ob

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here mentioned; a question, which, i am afraid, must be determined in the affirmative.

this equivalent may be, it is impossible "for me precisely to point out; but be it "what it may, you must yield it, or yield "your hopes to retain the dominion of the "Western States, which would be instant"ly ruined by the closing of the Missis"sippi, and which, to avoid that ruin, "would transfer their allegiance to the

power, on whose pleasure their prospe"rity will solely depend."-But still you hoped! I read your reflections on my letter; I saw and I pitied your blindness. You thought my fears were "not totally desti

tute of foundation," but you disliked my "desponding tone," and asserted that I under-rated your power. No, no; alas! it was not your power that I doubted of, but your will. Like us, you have the arms and the hands, but, like us, you want the directing mind and the animating soul wherewith to oppose the sagacious, bold, and persevering foe, who is now approach. ing the very vitals of your country.

I have heretofore expatiated upon the evils, which will, which unavoidably must, be produced, by the shutting you out of all the ports in the late Spanish, now French, ferritories, and from closing, in fact, the River Mississippi against you. Begging leave, therefore, to refer you to what I have said on that part of the subject, † I propose to confine myself, at present, to an inquiry whether or not France has a right to exclude "which the occasion claimed from me, being "equally aware of the obligation to maintain, in "all cases, the rights of the nation, and to em"ploy, tor that purpose, those just and honour"able means which belong to the character of the "United States.

And here pray let me caution you to divest yourselves, in the present instance, of that overbearing turn of mind, which you have contracted from the success of your revolution, from the flattery heaped on you by Europeans, and particularly from your transactions with England, which have rendered you, amongst nations, what, amongst individuals, one would term a spoiled cbild. Let me beseech you to recollect, that you have not now to negotiate with a power, accustomed to concession; with a power, which, for the sake of peace and plenty, would receive £600,000 as a commutation for a debt of £5,000,000. France has no debts, no stock, in your country; you have no hold on her, and, if you had, she would sever herself from it, though it cost her a limb. Count, therefore, I conjure you, on nothing but on right and on might of the latter I shall speak hereafter; it is to a few observations relative to the former that I now have to request your patient attention.

The territories, which have now passed from the hands of Spain into those of France, include all the land on the western bank of the Mississippi, from its mouth to its source, and, on the eastern bank,* from the mouth of that river to the Portage de la Croix, which, reckoning the windings of the river, is more than 200 miles from the principal entrance at Fort Balise, and about 70 miles above New Orleans. Thus France has the sovereignty of the soil, on both sides of the river, for the space of 200 miles from its entrance, a space which you have, it appears to me, no other right to navigate, than that which you derive from the treaty cncluded with Spain in 1795, according to which treaty, his Most Catholic Majesty "has agreed, that the navigation of the "said River Mississippi, in its whole "breadth, from the source to the ocean, "shall be free only to his subjects and the "citizens of the United States, unless be "should extend this privilege to the sub"jects of other powers, by special conven"tion."-Then, it is, in a subsequent part of the same treaty agreed, that, in con.

* It is said, that France is to have all Florida, but I know for certain, that she is to have all the territory Iving between the Mississipi and the ri ver Tumbechbe, which, after traversing the Westen part of Georgia, falls, at the end of 300 miles, into the Bay of M.bile.

+ Article IV. See Laws of the United States, Vol. IV. p. 224•

sequence of the stipulations contained in "the fourth article, his Most Catholic Ma

jesty will permit the citizens of the "United States, for the space of three years "from this time, to deposit their merchan"dizes and effects in the port of New "Orleans, and to export them from thence "without paying any other duty than a "fair price for the hire of the stores; and

his Majesty promises either to continue "this permission, if he finds, during that "time, that it is not prejudicial to the in

terest of Spain, or, if he should not agree "to continue it there, he will assign to "them, on another part of the banks of "the Mississippi, an equivalent establish

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ment.

"*

It is of a breach of this latter stipulation, of which, as I have already noticed, you now complain, and, not without some foundation, if we were to consider the King of Spain as still being the sovereign of Louisiana; for, it does seem, that, when a transitory covenant, though fulfilled, has been continued on in its observance, even without being renewed, it continues to be binding on one of the parties as long as it is strictly complied with by the other. But, independent of the sovereignty having long ago been transferred to France, this stipulation is encumbered with so many circumstances, the engagement, on the part of his Catholic Majesty, is so perfectly indefinite, as to the time, manner, and place, of assigning, on another part of the banks of the

Mississippi, an equivalent establishment ;" there is, in short, such unbounded latitude for interpretation, that it would be very hazardous to assert, that what you now complain of is really a breach of the treaty of 1795, even supposing the sovereignty of Louisiana to be still in the King of Spain; and, when we consider the Spaniards as being themselves possessors by sufferance, or rather, as being nothing more, in the present instance, than the agents of France, your ground of complaint, on this score, vanishes altogether.

But, the great question is, whether you have or have not, in consequence of the cession to France of the territories now under our view, lost, not only all right to the use of any port or place therein, but also to navigate on any of that part of the River Mississippi, which lies between the Portage

de la Croix (the termination of your own territory) and the sea, a space, as I before observed, of more than two hundred miles. It appears to me, that you have lost this right, and I once more bespeak your pati* Article All.-Laws U. S. Vol.. IV. p. 237.

ence, while I state the reasons, on which this opinion is founded.

That your right of navigating upon the waters (if not extended by specific convention) terminates at the same point with your right of walking upon the land, by the side of which those waters run, is a principle universally acknowledged; it is founded in reason, in justice, in the law, and in the practice of nations, with the very existence of which it is coeval. I remember, indeed, when your wild democratic scribblers clamoured against the government for not compelling the king (I am afraid they called him the "crown"ed monster") of Spain to open the mouth of the Mississippi to the produce of your lands; for not compelling him to yield you your natural rights. I remember much of this incoherent and hectoring bombast, and though it might excite nothing but a smile, when applied to such a neighbour as the feeble and sluggardly Spaniards, it will, if applied to the French, prove, I fear, something worse than ridiculous. Those profound writers, who conduct the London newspapers, have, I perceive, done you the honour, in this case, to espouse your cause, and most vociferously to assert your claims and echo your complaints; but, give me leave to caution you not to place too much reliance on these diurnal civilians, whose minds are as volatile and whose principles as transient as the flying folios on which their opinions are inscribed. No; listen not to these jurists of the mob; from their hazarded and noisy assertions turn to the dictates of reason and the maxims of the law.

"Rivers and lakes," says MARTENS, "are "useful for navigation or for fishing, or for "other emoluments arising from their pos

session; and, therefore, the powers that

are masters of the banks have a right to ap"propriate the use of them exclusively to "themselves." After thus stating the principle, he proceeds to the practice of nations in this respect: "In general," says he, they do forbid foreigners to fish on them; "but, with respect to navigation, as such a "prohibition would produce retaliation, and "as it is contrary to the commercial liberty "generally introduced in Europe, foreigners

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are now permitted, in time of peace, to navigate freely and without restraint. "This liberty is founded, in part, on trea"ties, and, in some demi-sovereign states, on laru. But, in every case, where it is "only founded on custom, that custom does not hinder a nation from making whatever regulations and restrictions it pleases, or "from exercising over such parts of its ter