XXXIV. TO THE FRENCH INHABITANTS OF LOUISIANA.(1)
1 In a letter to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury
(Oct 14, 1804), John Randolph of Roanoke proposed "the
printing of — thousand copies of Tom Paine's answer to
their remonstrance, and transmitting them by as many
thousand troops, who can speak a language perfectly
intelligible to the people of Louisiana, whatever that of
their government may be," The purchase of Louisiana was
announced to the Senate by President Jefferson, October 17,
1803.—Editor.
A publication having the appearance of a memorial and remonstrance, to be presented to Congress at the ensuing session, has appeared in several papers. It is therefore open to examination, and I offer you my remarks upon it. The title and introductory paragraph are as follows:
"To the Congress of the United States in the Senate and House of Representatives convened: We the subscribers, planters, merchants, and other inhabitants of Louisiana, respectfully approach the legislature of the United States with a memorial of our rights, a remonstrance against certain laws which contravene them, and a petition for that redress to which the laws of nature, sanctioned by positive stipulations, have entitled us."
It often happens that when one party, or one that thinks itself a party, talks much about its rights, it puts those of the other party upon examining into their own, and such is the effect produced by your memorial.
A single reading of that memorial will show it is the work of some person who is not of your people. His acquaintance with the cause, commencement, progress, and termination of the American revolution, decides this point; and his making our merits in that revolution the ground of your claims, as if our merits could become yours, show she does not understand your situation.
We obtained our rights by calmly understanding principles, and by the successful event of a long, obstinate, and expensive war. But it is not incumbent on us to fight the battles of the world for the world's profit. You are already participating, without any merit or expense in obtaining it, the blessings of freedom acquired by ourselves; and in proportion as you become initiated into the principles and practice of the representative system of government, of which you have yet had no experience, you will participate more, and finally be partakers of the whole. You see what mischief ensued in France by the possession of power before they understood principles. They earned liberty in words, but not in fact. The writer of this was in France through the whole of the revolution, and knows the truth of what he speaks; for after endeavouring to give it principle, he had nearly fallen a victim to its rage.
There is a great want of judgment in the person who drew up your memorial. He has mistaken your case, and forgotten his own; and by trying to court your applause has injured your pretensions. He has written like a lawyer, straining every point that would please his client, without studying his advantage. I find no fault with the composition of the memorial, for it is well written; nor with the principles of liberty it contains, considered in the abstract. The error lies in the misapplication of them, and in assuming a ground they have not a right to stand upon. Instead of their serving you as a ground of reclamation against us, they change into a satire on yourselves. Why did you not speak thus when you ought to have spoken it? We fought for liberty when you stood quiet in slavery.
The author of the memorial injudiciously confounding two distinct cases together, has spoken as if he was the memorialist of a body of Americans, who, after sharing equally with us in all the dangers and hardships of the revolutionary war, had retired to a distance and made a settlement for themselves. If, in such a situation, Congress had established a temporary government over them, in which they were not personally consulted, they would have had a right to speak as the memorial speaks. But your situation is different from what the situation of such persons would be, and therefore their ground of reclamation cannot of right become yours. You are arriving at freedom by the easiest means that any people ever enjoyed it; without contest, without expense, and even without any contrivance of your own. And you already so far mistake principles, that under the name of rights you ask for powers; power to import and enslave Africans; and to govern a territory that we have purchased.