Atlantic seas. This alliance once formed, America might forbid them to set a foot in Louisiana, or might drive them and their "natural allies," the Spaniards, into the Gulph of Mexico. It is with the consciousness of this on their minds, that they have been so sedulous in forming a faction to oppose every accommodating step, and every advance towards friendship, between the two countries. They have the Machiavelian maxim, "divide and you govern," continually in their eye. They wish to keep them asunder, that they may devour them one at a time. The most disagreeable circumstance at present, is, this cession of Louisiana will not be perfectly ascertained, till after the general peace; so that, though Great Britain is nearly as much interested in the event as America, she can take no steps to prevent it, because she will be disarmed before it be known; and their myrmidons will be in possession of their promised land, before any measures of prevention can be adopted on the part of America. Something, however, must be done to preserve us from such neighbours, or the independence of this country will go to the grave before us. National precautions must be left to the rulers of the state, but every man has it in his power to contribute towards the discouragement of faction, that, at any rate, though there should be an enemy on the frontiers, there may be none in the heart of the country. Such is the situation of America with respect to the insidious, unprincipled, insolent, and perfidious Republic of France; and it only remains for the virtue and public spirit of the people to determine, what sort of answer ought to be given to her presumptuous and domineering minister. Let it be well remembered, that the notes, containing his calumnious accusations, his contemptuous defiance and and hectoring threats, are not the effusions of a paragraphist or a pamphleteer: they are the official communications of a public minister, thrown in the teeth of the nation. In less than two months they will be read and commented on by half the civilized world. Those who know the American character will not be deceived; but far the greater part, will set us down as a nation of sharpers or poltroons, who have either not honesty to support our reputation, or not courage to defend it. If there be a man, who, with this reflection on his mind, can wish the government to stoop, and cringe, and sue and beg for peace, to court a repetition of the buffet that yet tingles in our cheek, he may boast about independence, he may even call himself a patriot; but his independence is an empty sound, and he knows no more of the animating glow of patriotism, where affection, duty and honour unite, than the slave knows of the charms of liberty, or the eunuch of the sweets of love.-No; the answer of every man, who loves his country and feels the insult it has received, yet prefers the blessings of honourable peace to the inevitable calamities of war, is, in the words of a good old English king that conquered France and all that France contained: "The sum of all our answer is but this: END OF POLITICAL CENSOR. NO. VI. |