"I will forward the testimonials, &c."
The reader is requested to pause, to reflect on the state of things at the date of this letter, and to ask himself if its inevitable tendency be not to strengthen the impression in the Directory of France which had influenced its conduct towards the United States?—If it be not in the same spirit with the interpolated sentence, carried to a greater extreme, and calculated to produce the same effect?—If the editor who made the interpolation might not reasonably suppose that he was only applying expressly to France a sentiment already indicated in terms too plain to be misunderstood?
France and Great Britain were then waging deadly war against each other. In this mortal conflict, each sought to strengthen herself, or weaken her adversary by any influence to be acquired over foreign powers—by obtaining allies when allies were attainable, or securing neutrality where co-operation was not to be expected. The temper with which the American people contemplated this awful spectacle can not be forgotten. The war of our revolution, in which France fought by the side of America against Great Britain, was fresh in their recollection. Her unexamined professions of republicanism enlisted all their affections in her favour, and all their antipathies against the monarchs with whom she was contending. Feelings which were believed to be virtuous, and which certainly wore the imposing garb of patriotism, impelled them with almost irresistible force against that wise neutrality which the executive government had laboured to preserve, and had persisted in preserving with wonderful and unexampled firmness. France might, not unreasonably, indulge the hope that our government would be forced out of its neutral course, and be compelled to enter into the war as her ally. The letter to Mazzei could scarcely fail to encourage this hope.
The suggestion had been repeatedly made, and France not only countenanced but acted on it, that the American people were ready to take part with her, and were with difficulty restrained by their government. That the government had fallen into the hands of an English party who were the more closely attached to their favourite nation, because they were unfriendly to republicanism, and sought to assimilate the government of the United States to that of England. Partiality to England was ingratitude to France. Monarchical propensities were of course anti-republican, and led to a system of policy separating the United States from republican France, and connecting them with her monarchical enemies.
These sentiments were expressed in the interpolated sentence; and are intimated in terms perhaps more offensive, certainly not to be mistaken, in the letter as avowed.
Review its language.
"In place of that noble love of liberty and republican government which carried us triumphantly through the War, an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance as it has already done the forms of the British government."
Could this party have been friendly—must it not have been hostile to France? It was not only monarchical and aristocratical,—it was Anglican also. Consequently it was anti-Gallican. But it did not comprehend the mass of the people. "The main body of our citizens, however," continues the letter, "remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents." Who then composed this odious Anglican, monarchical, aristocratical party? The letter informs us: "Against us are the executive, the judiciary, two out of three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants and Americans trading on British capitals, speculators, and holders in the banks and public funds."
The executive then and at least one other branch of the legislature were Anglican. The judiciary, a department not absolutely insignificant in a maritime war, was also Anglican. But the executive, being the organ of intercourse with foreign nations, is considered by them as essentially the government. This being thought Anglican, its course being such as to induce the writer to brand it with this odious epithet, ought it to excite surprise that an editor, the organ of the French government, made the strictures upon it which are quoted in the note? Are not those strictures as applicable to the letter now avowed as to the interpolated sentence?
The remark that the "French government had testified its resentment by breaking off communication with an ungrateful and faithless ally until she shall return to a more just and benevolent conduct," was the assertion of a fact which had taken place, and the commentary discloses its object not less plainly than did the time at which this fact was announced to the American government and people.[74] "It will give rise in the United States," says the editor, "to discussions which may afford a triumph to the party of good republicans, the friends of France."