LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 5 



Twelve months and more have elapsed, and the expedition 

 still lingers, while the prospect of its departure seems to recede 

 from the vision of the public. Was this delay for want of energy 

 or from want of friendly disposition ? The account of the expe- 

 dition aroused the maritime powers, who were deiermined that 

 this youthful nation should not run away with all the glories of 

 discovery and examination ; and while you have been weighing, 

 and pondering, and devising means for delay and seeking for 

 causes for procrastinating the whole enterprise, the French gov- 

 ernment has fitted out three expeditions into the South Seas ; and 

 with each a frigate — ay, a frigate — a machine so ponderous and 

 ingulfing to your imagination ! These well-equipped expedi- 

 tions have moved to their destinations for the protection of com- 

 merce, for the security and defence of their fisheries, and for 

 scientific purposes ; and even a fourth is in a stale of forwardness 

 for the same noble purposes. 



Why are we not then before them ? Congress made the most 

 ample provisions for the expedition. The people ask, and I as 

 one of them, what under heaven has been the cause of this pro- 

 crastination ? Will the energetic people of this country, who, in 

 1797, when we were insulted by the French directory, spread 

 over the forests of our country, bowed the oak beneath the axe, 

 built sloops of war, armed and manned them, and in less than a 

 hundred days from the orders given to build were pouring their 

 thunders into the French cruisers among the West Indian Isflands; 

 can these men and their descendants brook such a delay with- 

 out inquiry ? 



But, for the present, I will not pursue this inquiry farther. 

 You, under the specious appearance of sincerity, opened a cor- 

 respondence with some of our learned societies, asked them to 

 recommend suitable persons to form a scientific corps, which the 

 executive determined should accompany the expedition. Gen- 

 tlemen were recommended and selected ; men sharing largely in 

 the confidence of men of science, and burning to distinguish 

 themselves in their departments. 



I have heard it intimated that you had some pretensions to sci- 

 ence, and that you were a member of the philosophical society. 

 From that circumstance I should have expected that you would 

 deal out a different measure of justice to the members of the scien- 



