their hands. It is by the blunders of such men as Mr. Hale, who belongs to the Federal faction of blundering politicians, that matters of this kind are brought to light. The blunders of one man often serve to suggest right ideas to another man. The impost revenue collected at the port of New York is estimated at more than 4,000,000 dollars, about 3,000,000 dollars of which is drawn from other States, and the remaining 1,324,426 is paid by the population of New York, which, as before said, is 37,317 less than is paid by Pennsylvania.

Mr. Hale's proposal is to demand of the Government of the United States the appropriation of a sum equal to the impost revenue of the port of New York; as if all the impost revenue collected there was paid by the State. I have now placed before his eyes the folly as well as the injustice of his proposal, and I have also done it to prevent other people being imposed upon by such absurdities.

Mr. Hale concludes his string of resolutions with the following:

"Resolved, as the sense of this Legislature, that no nation however enlightened, populous, or enterprising it may be, can maintain a respectable standing as a commercial nation, without the protection and support of a respectable navy."

In the first place, this resolve is conceived in ignorance and founded on a falsehood. Hamburgh has carried on a greater commerce than any town or city in the European Continent, Amsterdam excepted, and yet Hamburgh has not a single vessel of war; and on the other hand, England, with a navy of nearly one hundred and forty sail of the line, besides frigates almost without number, is shut out by land from all the ports on the Continent of Europe.

Navies do not protect commerce, neither is the protection of commerce their object. They are for the foolish and unprofitable purpose of fighting and sinking each other at sea; and the result is, that every victory at sea is a victory of loss. The conqueror, after sinking and destroying a part of his enemies' fleet, goes home with crippled ships and broken bones. The English fire the Tower guns, and the French sing Te Deum.

But Mr. Hale, in order to have completed his work, should have added another resolve, and that should have been about the expence of a navy; for unless the United States have a navy at least equal to the navies of other na tions, she had better have none, for it will be taken and turned

against her. The navy of one nation pays no respect to the navy of another nation.

The expence of the English navy for 1806, according to the report of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in March of that year, was upwards of 68,000,000 dollars. The portion of the expence which the State of New York would have to pay as her quota towards raising what Mr. Hale calls a respectable navy," would be 8,000,000 dollars over and above the impost revenue of 1,324,426, and therefore Mr. Hale should have finished with a resolve to the following purport:

"Resolved, as the sense of this Legislature, that the farmers and landholders of the city and State of New York ought most cheerfully to pay, and this Legislature has no doubt but they will pay, the sum of 8,000,000 dollars annually, over and above the impost revenue, as the quota of this State, towards raising a 'respectable navy' to fight either the French navy, the Spanish navy, the English navy, or any other navy.'

As trees cannot be voted into ships by a resolve of the Legislature; it is first necessary to settle about the expence of a navy, and the manner in which that expence is to be defrayed, before they resolve about building a navy. Count the cost is a good maxim. Mr. Hale has begun his work at

the wrong end.

April 3, 1807,

COMMON SENSE.

ON THE EMISSARY CULLEN.

IT appears by a paragraph in the Public Advertiser, that Cullen, alias Carpenter, or whatever his name is, if he has any name, has commenced a prosecution against the printer or publisher of the Public Advertiser, but the prosecution does not say what it is for. Some advantages will arise from this and some amusement also. He will now have to identify himself and prove who he is, and upon what recommendation he came to America, and get some persons of respectability if he can to attest for him. We have not established liberty as an asylum for impostors. Mr. Duane of Philadelphia knew him in India and in England, and he can prove that he did not then go by the name he now goes by,

The

and the man that changes his name is an impostor. law can know nothing of such persons but for the purpose of punishing them.

This

Thomas Paine will also know where to find him when the prosecution comes on, for he concealed himself from all the enquiries Mr. Paine made to find him or his place of residence. The case is, that Cullen's paper had falsified a publication written by Mr. Paine and published in the Citizen, on the danger to which a neutral nation exposed itself by harbouring an Emissary, or a suspected emissary, of one belligerent nation against another belligerent nation. publication was falsified in Cullen's paper insidiously entitled "The People's Friend." Mr. Paine copied off the falsifications and desired a friend of his, a merchant in John Street, to call on Cullen, and read the falsifications to him, and demand who was the writer of them. The gentleman called at the printing office, but Cullen, alias Carpenter, was not there. The gentleman left word that he would call the next day and that he had something to communicate to Mr. Carpenter. He called accordingly but Carpenter was not there. He then asked the persons in the office where Mr. Carpenter lodged; they said they did not know, but they believed it was a good way off. The gentleman then left word for the third time, that he would call the next day, which he did, but Carpenter was not to be found, nor could any account be given of him. Mr. Paine will now know where to find him.

This man with two or three names has laid his damages at three thousand dollars. One way to get rich is first to be a rascal and then prosecute for exposing the rascality. But why did he not lay the damages at an hundred thousand dollars. There is a precedent for this.

April 8, 1807.

THREE LETTERS TO MORGAN LEWIS, ON HIS PROSECUTION OF THOMAS FARMER, FOR ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS DAMAGES.

Letter the First.

THE proud integrity of conscious rectitude fears no reproach, and disdains the mercenary idea of damages. It is not the sound, but the ulcerated flesh that flinches from the touch. A man must feel his character exceedingly vulnerable, who can suppose that any thing said about him, or against him, can endamage him a hundred thousand dollars: yet this is the sum Morgan Lewis has laid his damages at, in his prosecution of Mr. Farmer, as chairman of a meeting of republican citizens. This is a case, abstracted from any idea of damages, that ought to be brought before the representatives of the people assembled in Legislature. It is an attempted violation of the rights of citizenship, by the man whose official duty it was to protect them.

Mr. Farmer was in the exercise of a legal and constitutional right. He was chairman of a meeting of citizens, peaceably assembled to consider on a matter that concerned themselves, the nomination of a proper person to be voted for as governor at the ensuing election. Had the meeting thought Morgan Lewis a proper person, they would have said so, and would have had a right to say so. But the meeting thought otherwise, and they had a right to say otherwise. But what has Morgan Lewis, as governor, to do with either of these cases. He is not governor jure divino, by divine right, nor is he covered with the magical mantle which covers a king of England, that He can do no wrong; nor is the governorship of the State his property, or the property of his family connexions.

If Morgan Lewis could be so unwise and vain as to suppose he could prosecute for what he calls damages, he should prosecute every man who composed that meeting, except the chairman; for in the office of chairman, Mr. Farmer was a silent man on any matter discussed or decided there. He could not even give a vote on any subject, unless it was a tye vote, which was not the case. The utmost use Mr. Lewis could have made of Mr. Farmer would have

been to have subpoenaed him to prove that such resolves were voted by the meeting; for Mr. Farmer's signature to those resolves, as chairman of the meeting, was no other than an attestation that such resolves were then passed.

Morgan Lewis, in this prosecution, has committed the same kind of error that a man would commit who should prosecute a witness for proving a fact done by a third person, instead of prosecuting that third person on whom the fact was proved. Morgan Lewis is, in my estimation of character, a poor lawyer, and a worse politician. He cannot maintain this prosecution; but I think Mr. Farmer might maintain a prosecution against him. False prosecution ought to be punished; and this is a false prosecution, because it is a wilful prosecution of the wrong person. If Morgan Lewis has sustained any damage, or any injury, which I do not believe he has, it is by the members composing the meeting, and not by the chairman. The resolves of a meeting are not the act of the chairman.

But in what manner will Morgan Lewis prove damages? damages must be proved by facts; they cannot be proved by opinion-opinion proves nothing. Damages given by opinion, are not damages in fact, and a jury is tied down to fact, and cannot take cognizance of opinion. Morgan Lewis must prove that between the time those resolves were passed, and the time he commenced his prosecution, he sustained damages to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, and he must produce facts in proof of it. He must also prove that those damages were in consequence of those resolves, and could he prove all this, it would not reach Mr. Farmer, because, as before said, the resolves of a meeting are not the act of the chairman.

This is not a case merely before a jury of twelve men. The whole public is a jury in a case like this, for it concerns their public rights as citizens, and it is for the purpose of freeing it from the quibbling chicanery of law, and to place it in a clear intelligible point of view before the people that I have taken it up.

But as people do not read long pieces on the approach of an election, and as it is probable I may give a second piece on the subject of damages, I will stop where I am for the present. THOMAS PAINE.

April 14, 1807,