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lieve, that the nation was really become a Republic, and that this constitution, about which there had been so much noise, and rejoicing, and feasting, and singing, and swearing, should be so completely destroyed as to leave neither remnant

rag visible? Must they be looked upon as the enemies of France, because they did not yield implicit credit to him who first told them, that the very men who had declared the king's person to be "sa"cred and inviolable," had dipped their hands in his blood; and that the people, who had solemnly vowed to maintain the decree with their lives, had basely applauded the sanguinary deed?It is not the final determination of the American government, for that was in favour of the Convention, but it is its hesitation, of which Citizen Adet complains as if he said-" How could you, for a mo

ment, doubt of the faithlessness of my country"men? How durst you hesitate to think them, " what they have since so fully proved themselves, "a horde of traitors, perjurers, and assassins ?". If the Citizen will but forgive the government this time, I will answer for them they will never doubt on this subject again.

But, if it was so very natural for the Federal Government to view the French in their true character, was not that a reason, on the other hand, for deliberating whether their republican minister should be received in preference to the agents of the Princes? The government had the interests of America to attend to in this important decision, as well as those of France. A weighty debt was due from this country, not to the regenerated nation nor to its blood-thirsty tyrants, but to Louis XVI, bis heirs and successors. A minister from the Republic once admitted, a claim of the interest of the debt could not be refused; and if the volatile and perjured nation had recalled the successor of their sovereign,

sovereign, would not that successor have demanded, and with justice, a second payment of such interest? This has not yet happened, but it does not follow that it might not have happened. In the common affairs of men, he who has been once convicted of perjury, is never after looked upon as credible; and the same rule is applicable to societies. It is entirely owing to the want of good faith among the allies, and to the dastardly conduct of the Princes themselves, neither of which could well be foreseen at the time, that a Bourbon is not now on the throne of France: so that, the Federal Government, instead of discovering a hostile disposition towards the Republic, certainly hazarded much in its favour.

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But, considerations of this nature have no weight with the new sovereigns of France. Their object in bringing forward the charge at this time, is, not to impress on the minds of the people that their government acted unjustly or unwisely, but that it leaned to the side of monarchy rather than to that of republicanism. That this is false is clear from the result; but were the insinuation just, had the government expressed a wish to see such a monster of a republic as that of France crushed in its birth, the wish would have been a most pious

one.

Republicanism is become, for what reason I know not, synonimous with freedom and happiness, and there are thousands among us who pretend to believe, notwithstanding the terrible example before their eyes, that men cannot be enslaved under a form of government that is called republican. Mr. Adams, in his Defence of the American Constitutions, Vol. I. page 87, says: "Our countrymen "will never run delirious after a word or a name. "The name republic is given to things in their

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"nature as different and contradictory as light "and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, happiness and misery. There are free republics, and republics as tyrannical as an ori"ental despotism.” -How fully is the truth of these observations exemplified in the republics of America and France! But even this wise and deep-sighted civilian could not imagine that his countrymen would ever run delirious after a name; much less could he imagine, that he should live to see many of them extolling, as the paragon of republics, a system of tyranny that has all the appearance of being an instrument of the wrath of heaven.

I shall dismiss this first charge against the government, with observing, that the meanness equals the impudence of making it. We have seen the French murder their king, whose greatest fault was his confidence in their fidelity; we have seen them drag his headless and bloody carcass from the scaffold, throw it into a pit without the rites of sepulture, and, to deprive it of even the privilege of rotting, consume it with hot lime. Yet, after all this, they are not ashamed to complain, that they were not, without hesitation, admitted as heirs his successors! They are not ashamed to enjoy the benefits resulting from a contract, made with the very man the anniversary of whose murder they celebrate! Like the treacherous labourers, they first slay the lord of the vineyard, and then seize on his possessions, his titles and his deeds. Men may be unjust and tyrannical, they may even be cruel and ferocious, without being mean. There are many assassins who would scorn to dress themselves in the robes of their victim. But, to unite vices seemingly incompatible, is the characteristic of the regenerated French: in all they say and do, there is such a mixture of licentiousness and servility, of frivolity and fero

city, of duplicity, insolence and meanness, that we know not whether to despise or hate them

most.

66 2. The government made a proclamation of insi"dious neutrality."

This charge is as false as it is rude. I would beg this well-informed and polite citizen, to name one single instance of the insincerity of the Federal Government, in enforcing this proclamation. As applied to the conduct of some part of the people, indeed, the neutrality might be called insidious; but then, this insidiousness operated in favour of the French and not against them. There were many who highly approved of the proclamation, and who at the same time actually made war upon the enemies of France. An army of Americans, under the authority of Genet, invaded the Spanish territories, while privateers were fitted out to cruize on the British; cargoes of ammunition and arms were shipped off, and thanksgivings, and other public demonstrations of joy, were heard from one end of the Union to the other. The bells of the good old Christian church, opposite me, fired rounds to celebrate the inundation of the Atheistical barbarians into Holland; and the English flag was burnt at Philadelphia, on the public square, as a sacrifice to the goddess of French liberty. These latter circumstances are trifling in themselves, 'tis true, and certainly excited nothing but contempt and ridicule, in the minds of those whom they were intended to insult; but, the question is (and it is to ask this question that they are here mentioned,) what would the French, that "terrible "nation," have said, had these insults, these marks of an insidious neutrality been offered to them? Would they have not sent their fleets and knocked down our towns and burnt our ships? No; the

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enemy would have stopped them on the way; but they would have stirred hell to seek for the means of vengeance. What they had wanted in deeds, they would have made up for in words. Every opprobrious term in their new-fangled vocabulary would have been heaped on our heads. How many sacrés matins and jean-f-tres and f-tus chiens and libertécides and neutralitécides would they have called the poor Anglo-Americans, in the course of a Decade! Instead of bell, book and candle, they would have cursed us with all the gods of their heathenish calendar; and, which would have been infinitely worse, they would have cursed us with the teazing remonstrances of an impertinent minister.

Where a breach of neutrality, cognizable by the laws, appeared, the Federal Government always did its utmost to bring the offenders to justice, and it is for this very reason, that the late diplomatic Mounseer has dared to accuse it of an insidious neutrality. After the poclamation was issued, and Genet saw that there was no hope of setting it aside by inciting the people to rebellion, he feigned an acquiescence, and declared, that the Convention did not wish the prosperity of their dear brethren of America to be interrupted by a participation in the war. It entered into his delirious brain, that the proclamation was to be a mere cloak, under which he thought to enlist as many soldiers and arm as many privateers as he could pay for. Such a neutrality would, indeed, have been more advantageous to France than an open declaration of war on the part of the United States; but when he found that the government was resolved to enforce the proclamation; when he found that his pirates were not permitted to rob and plunder with impunity, and that the American harbours were not to serve them as

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