I enclose you a part of a speech of Mr. Gallatin on the naval bill.  The views he takes of our finances, and of the policy of our undertaking to establish a great navy, may furnish some hints.  I am told, something on the same subject from Mr. J. Nicholas will appear in the Richmond and Fredericksburg papers.  I mention the real author, that you may respect it duly, for I presume it will be anonymous.  The residue of Gallatin’s speech shall follow when published.  A recent fact proving the anxiety of France for a reconciliation with us, is the following.  You know that one of the armed vessels which we took from her was refitted by us, sent to cruise against her, re-captured, and carried into Guadaloupe under the name of the Retaliation.  ’On the arrival there of Desfourneaux, the new commissioner, he sent Victor Hughes home in irons; called up our captain; told him that he found he had a regular commission as an officer of the United States; that his vessel was then lying in the harbor; that he should inquire into no fact preceding his own arrival (by this he avoided noticing that the vessel was really French property), and that, therefore, himself and crew were free to depart with their vessel; that as to the differences between France and the United States, commissioners were coming out to settle them, and, in the mean time, no injury should be done on their part.  The captain insisted on being a prisoner; the other disclaimed; and so he arrived here with vessel and crew the day before yesterday.  Within an hour after this was known to the Senate, they passed the retaliation bill, of which I enclose you a copy.  This was the more remarkable, as the bill was founded expressly on the Arret of October the 29th, which had been communicated by the President as soon as received, and he remarked, ’that it could not be too soon communicated to the two Houses and the public’.  Yet he almost in the same instant received, through the same channel, Mr. King’s information that that Arret was suspended, and though he knew we were making it the foundation of a retaliation bill, he has never yet communicated it.  But the Senate knew the fact informally from the Secretary of State, and knowing it, passed the bill.

The President has appointed, and the Senate approved, Rufus King, to enter into a treaty of commerce with the Russians, at London, and William Smith (Phocion), Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, to go to Constantinople to make one with the Turks.  So that as soon as there is a coalition of Turks, Russians, and English, against France, we seize that moment to countenance it as openly as we dare, by treaties, which we never had with them before.  All this helps to fill up the measure of provocation towards France, and to get from them a declaration of war, which we are afraid to be the first in making.  It is certain the French have behaved atrociously towards neutral nations, and us particularly; and though we