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defence, if they have any, the writer of this will shew them the absurdity of it, for he believes that he knows more, because he has seen more of fortified places than they have.

The case is, that New York is the worst situation for defence that could be chosen. The original plan for building the city was at Harlaem, which is a better situation both for commerce and defence than the point of the island is where the city now stands. The waters of the North river and the East river, by means of the river at Kingsbridge, unite at Harlaem, and the market would be seven or eight miles nearer the country than it now is.

COMMON SENSE.

Nov. 13, 1806.

NOTIFICATIONS RESPECTING THE IMPOSTOR CULLEN, ALIAS M'CULLEN, ALIAS CARPENTER, THE ASSOCIATE OF THE FEDERALISTS OF NEW YORK.

IN former communications respecting this impostor, I mentioned that Duane, the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, knew him both in England and in India. Before I state Duane's further account of him I will relate what I have been told of him in this city, New York.

This man arrived in this city (New York) about four years ago and lodged at a house in which a friend of mine then was. Cullen at that time passed by the name of Mac Cullen, and as it often happens to men of his description that when the liquor is in the wit is out, he often let himself out very foolishly. He vauntingly said he had been offered great sums of money by the English ministry not to write against them. He went to his room one day when he was in his capers, and dressed himself in an English regimental uniform, and came to shew himself. [N. B. He has been a regimental deputy pay-master, and is the son of Cullen the box keeper of Crow Street Theatre, Dublin.]

In his journey from New York he called on Duane at Philadelphia, to sell him some types, and desired Duane to conceal his name and not to expose him. Duane replied, (see the Aurora of Nov. 1st.) "As to revealing your secret you have no right to impose secresy on me. At the same

time it will depend on yourself to furnish a motive for silence or publicity on the subject; and that will depend entirely

upon the object of your coming to this country, and the course you mean to pursue in it."

Cullen." My purpose is to have no concern with party or politics. I wish to purchase a snug farm near Washington if I can, and to occupy my leisure in literary pursuits, totally distant from politics with which I have done for ever.'

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Duane. "In such a case, I can have no motive for interfering with you or your name-but let me observe that from the knowledge which I have of you and your political connections in England I should be very apt to suspect that you came to this country with very different views."

Cullen. "By no means. I have done with politics for

ever."

Duane. "If you have come to this country for the purpose you say, and I shall not dispute it unless good reasons appear to the contrary; if you are not come here as an enemy to civil liberty, as an emissary of the English minister (meaning Pitt who sent emissaries into Germany) and do not pursue the same course of politics here that you did in London, your secret shall be kept; but let me tell you, that if you attempt to interfere in the political concerns of this country, or attempt to attack the principles of the government, I shall consider myself not only bound to expose you, but to present you to the world in the most open and unreserved manner,"

Duane bought the types and here the conversation ended. Duane then continues his account of this emissary by saying, that "he (Cullen) was in the pay of the official paper of the British treasury-that Windham, the patron of Porcupine, was his patron-that his name is Cullen and not Carpenter and that he is an Irishman, but an advocate of England (meaning the oppressions of England over Ireland.) A man, continues Duane, so branded with infamy may be worthy if Federal protection and countenance, but the American nation being thus explicitly apprised of the character of this emissary will be able at once to value his writings and the views of his supporters.'

"

Here ends Duane's account of him in the Aurora of November 1st.

In the Aurora of the 6th, Duane renews the subject, "It is, says he, an act of public justice to pursue this fellow Cullen, alias Carpenter, through all his windings. The countenancing such an impostor is a stigma on society; and the maintainance of him in one of our capital cities (New York) is a libel on the country, its morals, and its justice. While this

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man Cullen edited the Charleston Courier we rarely noticed bim; but his conduct there became such that it drew forth from some person well informed, a portraiture of the man. His departure soon followed.

"His course since he has been put in possession of a paper at New York, we have watched, because that city is the chief rendezvous of English influence and the principal asylum of old Toryism."

Aurora, Nov. 7th." The English emissary Cullen at New York has never stated his transaction as a deputy pay-master under the appointment of Mr. Windham [Porcupine's patron.] We are to presume his "miscarriage" in that situation produced his transit to the United States and the change of his name to Carpenter."

Here ends the extracts from the Aurora.

The conduct and character of this, Cullen, alias Mac Cullen, alias Carpenter are so very suspicious that unless he can give some satisfactory account of himself, and on what recommendation he came to this country, and call on some person of character to attest and answer for him, he ought not to be permitted to stay in the city. His continuance here will bring trouble. He is marked with all the suspicious tokens of an impostor and he exhibits the character of an emissary.

As he is a British subject, and not a citizen of the United States, and is a stranger here, and in disguise, will Mr. Erskine, the British minister, take him under his patronage and answer for him? If not it will be best to send him away. This is giving Cullen a chance he does not deserve.

It is a circumstance not easily accounted for, that at the very instant Mr. Erskine a gentleman of fair fame and respectable connections, is arrived at Washington on a mission to the government of the United States, that an impostor under a borrowed name and furnished with British regimentals, is employing himself in abusing, with the most infamous language of drunken intoxication, the same government, Mr. Erskine is commissioned to treat with. Can Rufus King or any man of mischief explain this?

Nov. 19, 1806.

COMMON SENSE.

REMARKS ON THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS OF EUROPE.

THE battles which decided the fate of the King of Prussia and his Government, began on the 9th of October, and ended on the 14th of that month; but the final event, that of the total overthrow of the Russian army of one hundred and fifty thousand men on the 14th, was not known in England till the 26th or 27th of October. The first public notice of it is in a London paper of the 27th (See the Mercantile Advertiser of Tuesday, Dec. 9th, and American Citizen, Dec. 10th). The article in the London paper of the 27th, which announces this event, begins as follows:

"London, Oct. 27.-It is with very great concern that we are obliged to check the pleasing expectations that were entertained YESTERDAY of the success of the Prussian army."

The manifesto and declaration of the English Government on the failure of the negociation for peace with France, and which throws all the blame of that failure on the French Government, was published in the London Gazette (the official paper of the English Government) on the 21st of October, five or six days before that Government knew of the overthrow of the Prussians. Query.-Would the English Government have published that manifesto had it been kept back till after the overthrow of the Prussians were known? I think not, unless it be true which fanatics have formerly said, that "those whom God intends to destroy he first renders mad."

It is a saying often verified by experience, that one story is good till another is told. In a little time we shall have the manifesto of the French Government, and then, by comparing the two with each other, and with such circumstances as are known, which is the only true way of interpreting manifestoes, we shall be enabled to form some judgment of the whole.

But as far as circumstances are already known, Buonaparte has done exactly what I would have done myself, with respect I mean to the present war, had I been in his place, which, thank God, I am not. Why are coalitions continu

ally formed and forming against him, against the French nation, and the French Government? Or why does the Government of England oppress and impoverish the people it governs by loading them with the burdensome expence of paying those coalitions? It is they who pay all, and I pity them sincerely.

The opposers of Buonaparte say, "he is a usurper.” The case is, that all the kings in Europe are usurpers, and as to hereditary Government, it is a succession of usurpers. The present hereditary Government of England is derived from the usurper, William of Normandy, who conquered England and usurped the Government. If there is any man amongst them all that is less a usurper than the rest, it is Buonaparte; for he was elected by the French nation to the rank and title he now holds. The others assumed it by the sword, or succeeded in consequence of the first usurpation.

As to the coalitions against France, it is impossible in the nature of things they can succeed while the French Government conducts itself with the energy and activity it now does. The English Government may amuse itself with forming coalitions as long and as often as it pleases, but they will all come to the same fatal end. For, in the first place, there is no single power on the Continent of Europe that is able to stand against France until a coalition army, coming in detachments from different and distant parts of Europe, can be collected and formed. And, in the second place, those distant detachments of an intended coalition army cannot be put in motion for the purpose of assembling somewhere in Germany without its being known by the French Government. The case, therefore, will always be, that as soon as the French Government knows that those distant parts are in motion, the French army, with Buonaparte at its head, will march and attack the first part of the coalition army he can come up with, and overthrow it. Last year that part was Austria. This year it is Prussia. The English Government may vote coalition armies in the cabinet, but Buonaparte can always prevent them in the field. This is a matter so very obvious to any man who knows the scene of Europe, and can calculate the probability of events, that a Cabinet must be sunk in total ignorance and stupidity not to see it; and thus it is that the lives of unoffending men are sported away.

As to the late negociation for peace between England and France, I view it as a trick of war on both sides, and the contest was which could outwit the other. The British ma

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