SHALL America be free or enslaved? Shall she be an humble province, an ignominious tributary, a tame vassal, a beast of burden, to a proud, overbearing, oppressive, foreign govern­ment?

SUCH were the indignant questions, which agi­tated our high-spirited countrymen on the 4th July, 1776. The appeal was made to the Most High! The decision is registered on the archives of Heaven!—and gratitude impels us solemnly to commemorate the occasions which gave it birth.

THE history of the oppressions which we suffered or were preparing for us, is fresh in the memory of every American. It has been depictured a thou­sand times with the glow of Genius, and with the fervor of Patriotism. It has been occasionally bur­nished by reiterated wrongs. It has been perpetu­ally [Page 6] preserved, polished, and colored by a formi­dable faction, stimulated by Gallic intrigue. With your permission therefore, my fellow-citizens, I will assume the Advocate, rather than the Histo­rian,—and will vindicate the glorious feelings, manners, and principles which led to our Revolu­tion, from the opprobrium, the calumny, the gross misrepresentation with which they have been as­sailed.

THE feelings of 1776 were those of high-minded Freemen. The manners were dictated by unsul­lied virtue, uncorrupted simplicity, and pure and undefiled Religion. The principles were an ardent Love of Liberty—an unconquerable Spirit of In­dependence—a hatred of foreign dominion—a detestation of domestic oppression. Recent as has been our Revolution, virtuous as it was in its principle, just in its design, honorable to the feelings which originated it, moderate and pacific in its progress, and brilliant in its termination, it has been its fate in common with all other good and great things to be grossly misunderstood, or wilfully calumniated.

WE have the misfortune to live in an age of violent Revolution. A new spirit of Chivalry, more Quixotic, more sanguinary, and more de­structive than that which formerly deluged Europe in blood—a blind and novel fanaticism, more vio­lent, and less restrained by moral sentiments, than that of the Crusaders of former ages, have seized upon the passions, have inflamed the imaginations, and threaten to destroy the repose of the whole [Page 7] Civilized World. Not content with overthrow­ing despotisms—with destroying monarchies—with subverting aristocracies,—without the request, and against the will of the People, who are most inter­ested in their fate—Not satisfied with attacking and destroying happy and peaceable Republics, which had the prescription of ages to prove their title to enjoyment and quiet, this restless and infer­nal spirit is employed with equal ardor, and with equal malevolence in undermining the only stable foundations of Social Order and Happiness.

THE Law of Nations opposed the propagation of this modern principle, and the "musty and worm-eaten" authorities of Grotius and Puffen­dorf, like cobwebs, must be swept away by the Revolutionary brush. The Civil Law regulating and enforcing the Contracts of individuals, and prescribing the titles to property, was a feeble bar­rier against a doctrine which destroyed all Con­tracts, and levelled all Property; it became a badge of Feudal Slavery, and must be abrogated. The code of Criminal Law was a restraint upon the pu­rity and patriotism of pirates, and assassins, and not one relic of such tyrannical establishments must stain the pages of Revolutionary History.

THE civil institutions of Society were a check upon the inordinate lusts and passions of mankind; they were some protection to the cause of order and ancient establishments; they must be abolished as the fruits of blind and ignorant prejudices. The moral and virtuous habits of the common people in all countries fettered their understand­ings, [Page 8] and restrained them from embracing with ardor the seductive doctrines of "Liberty and Equality"—the liberty of plundering their neigh­bors, and the equality of Crime; such fatal hab­its must be subverted, or this new-light Doctrine must perish. The Christian Religion, which taught mankind to reverence their Rulers; the belief of a Future State, which restrained villains from enormities which their passions would prompt them to execute; the existence of an omniscient GOD, which awes the most abandoned, whom hu­man laws cannot fetter; these were prejudices which tyrannized over the human understanding; they must therefore be ridiculed as the errors of weak and superficial minds; they must be uproot­ed, or the mild and philosophic reign of the "Rights of Man" cannot be firmly fixed and per­manently established.

In fine, this Revolutionary Hydra, more terrif­ic than any spectre which poetic fancy has de­scribed, more horrid in its aspect than the much famed Gorgon, more carnivorous than the Mon­ster of Thebes, more baleful than the most por­tentous Meteor, which has ever affrighted the imag­inations of mankind, has spared, in its destructive progress, neither age, nor sex, nor helpless infancy, nor customs, nor manners, nor ties, nor principles. Mercy forms no part of its attributes; Humanity is not a handmaid which appears in the train of its followers; Innocence supplicates it in vain; in­exorable to the demands of Justice, or to the mild­er claims of pity. In propagating Liberty, it has [Page 9] established the worst of slavery. Professing to se­cure the rights of man, it has thrown down all the barriers which have hitherto protected them. It has let loose upon Society the most ferocious passions of the worst of men. Virtue it has perse­cuted—Vice it has patronized and rewarded. Industry has been robbed of the fruits of its la­bor, to enrich and to pamper the lazy and the dissolute. Not confining itself to the wretched luxury of depriving mankind of the external com­forts of life, it has burrowed into the inmost re­cesses of the human heart, and tried to play the Tyrant over the Conscience. To make and to keep men Slaves, it has stripped them of those vir­tues and of those principles which alone fit them to be free. Whatever was established it has over­turned—Whatever was ancient it has moderni­zed—Whatever was virtuous it has corrupted— Whatever was respectable it has ridiculed—What­ever was sacred it has profaned. In lieu of order, it has substituted confusion—In place of obedience, it has organized insurrection—In the room of gov­ernment, it has established anarchy—In the stead of Religion, it has propagated Atheism. It has made man as wretched as he is capable in this world, and it has persecuted him beyond the grave, by depri­ving him of the hopes of future happiness, as a solace for present misery. In fine, it has thrown Law, Order, Morals, established Institutions, Re­ligion, every thing but the Solid Globe which we inhabit, into a state of Volcanic eruption, of cha­otic confusion.

[Page 10]THIS is but a faint picture of the modern Revo­lutionary Spirit. It would require the hand and coloring of a master, of a BURKE, or of an AMES, to give to it its genuine tints, its living expression. And is this the fiend-like spirit to which our glori­ous revolutionary "principles, feelings, and man­ners" have been compared? Is this the Liberty which is said to have been an emanation from our own? Is this the Freedom so often recommended to our patronage and support, as the Legitimate Off­spring of the pure and virtuous Flame which anima­ted the breasts of Americans? It is a counterfeit, not a Legitimate Progeny. To call this Liberty is a gross perversion of language—It is a wilful calumny upon the best and most distinguished patriots—It is a nefarious Libel upon the principles of our Rev­olution. To give it credit and currency, would be to fix an eternal stigma upon the American Char­acter. Our hoary Patriots would rise up, and dis­claim their share of the disgrace. Our departed Heroes and Statesmen would burst their cold im­prisonments, and vindicate their memories from the unmerited reproach. They would disdain to partake with Brissot, and Danton, and Rob­espierre, and Merlin, and Talleyrand, the disgrace­ful infamy of this modern, murderous, Revolution­ary Theory.

BE it our task then, my Fellow-Citizens, to res­cue the character of the American Revolution from this unmerited obloquy. That illustrious event had its origin in the justest principles, in the noblest feelings, in the purest motives. It was not the [Page 11] blind and convulsive effort of slavery to shake off fetters and manacles of despotism; but it was the calm, the dispassionate, the august resolution of en­lightened Freemen, to resist the earliest encroach­ments of arbitrary power. It did not proceed from a mere instinctive struggle to get rid of present suf­fering; but it was a penetrating foresight, and a de­termined opposition to future usurpation. Con­formable to the rectitude of its principles, and to the wisdom of its actors, was the equal and mode­rate temperature of its progress. Internally, Ame­rica exhibited no marks of a wild and fanatic Rev­olution. No Vendean war imbrued the hands of our Citizens in the blood of their brethren—No Revolutionary Tribunal was glutted with the gore of the innocent victims of revenge and of avarice— No Savage Females exhibited the ghastly visages of the victims of popular fury, with Cannibal-like Triumph—No helpless Infants were torn from the anguished breasts of their mothers, and impaled alive upon the pikes of our National Soldiery. In our Courts of Justice, no pretended material and moral proofs were ever substituted in the place of Testimony. In our Legislatures, no galleries abridged their Independence, no mountain awed their deliberations. No Robespierre in our Revo­lution was permitted to take the Liberties of the People under his kind protection—And no Marat has rendered our National Character execrable, by the savage atrocities which he perpetrated.

IN their principles, the People of America were as correct and exemplary as in their conduct. Distri­butive [Page 12] Justice, Civil Subordination, Moral Recti­tude, Religious Institutions, were as highly respect­ed as in times of ordinary quiet. They had no spirit of conquest, no passion for universal domination. Their patriotism was of the old fashioned kind— It was the love of their country, and of their neigh­bour—not the modern Philanthropy of Paine and of Godwin, which persuades us to despise the tender affections which play about the human heart, to contemn the ties of kindred, to hate our own Coun­try, and to embrace with ardor the human race. The System of Morals preserved by our Patriots, did not teach them that man was not entitled to the fruits of his own labor; that property was not transmissible to the children for whom it was ac­quired; that the end justifies the means; that mar­riage is a solemn farce; and that mankind may live forever: No—these discoveries in Ethics and Phys­ics were reserved for the modern Illuminati, and we, my Fellow-Citizens, will relinquish to them, without a murmur, the exclusive benefits of their invention.

^* FROM the moment we assumed the attitude and character of a nation, obedience, peaceable submis­sion to the constituted authorities, have been the standing creed of Americans. In what page of the Constitution of the most revolutionary State will you find insurrection inculcated as a sa­cred duty? Knowledge has been revered in this country, as the surest solid foundation for genu­ine [Page 13] freedom. Seminaries of learning have been founded and encouraged, and the means of gen­eral education have been diffused and cultivated.

WE did not with barbarian ferocity obliterate all the monuments of learning and genius. The American populace did not with Vandal rage de­stroy the ancient classics, because they were often printed for the use and by the permission of ty­rants. In our Legislatures, no Chabot denounced learned men, because the name was synonymous with Aristocrat; no Dumas dared to propose, that all men of genius should be guillotined; no Robespierre ventured to declare, that there ought only to exist one. The declaration of American Independence, which we this day celebrate, con­tains a solemn appeal to the Supreme Being. It professes a humble reliance on Divine Providence for protection and support. The same venera­tion for Religion has brightened every footstep of our Revolution. The Most High GOD was the Pillar of Fire by night, and the Cloud by day, to conduct us through the thorny paths of our dif­ficulties and distresses. We have not been asham­ed to acknowledge our crucified Saviour, nor to take up the cross and follow him, in this age of fashionable Infidelity. Here no mad Fanatic of Liberty dared to denounce the Altars of the Al­mighty! Here no atheistical Infidels ventured to arraign the majesty, and to provoke the venge­ance of the Deity! Here no wretched libertines substituted a courtezan as an object of profane adoration, and no High-Priest performed the [Page 14] mockery of religious rites to the most prostituted of her sex! We have not in this country perse­cuted the pious Teachers of the Gospel; we have not driven them from these sacred desks, and hunted them like wild beasts from the haunts of men: If they have of late been scandalously vili­fied and abused by the servile copyists of the Phi­losophers of France, it is because they have ren­dered the meed of merit to the Government of the United States. But let them be consoled with the reflection, that their Lord and Master was exposed to the like ridicule, and that our Sa­viour himself was denounced in France as an Aris­tocrat, because he rendered unto "Royal" Caesar the things that were Caesar's. To reduce this ex­tensive picture to a single contrasted view, the principles of France, as explained by their practice, tend to establish in every country the govern­ment of the sword, "to reduce mankind to the two simple classes of Soldiers and Cerfs,"^* while ours lead simply to a mild government of Laws and Manners, founded on the solid and sacred ba­sis of Rational Liberty and Revealed Religon.

SUCH, Americans, were the glorious "feelings, manners, and principles," which stimulated you to assume an independent rank among the nations of the earth.

WORTHY of such principles is the form of Gov­ernment which you wisely framed and calmly adopted. Worthy of such feelings and manners [Page 15] are the enlightened Statesmen, whom you have ever chosen to administer it.

CAN we recal to our recollection our distin­guished Patriots and Statesmen, and refuse one tributary tear, one solitary sigh to the memory of our lately extinguished Luminary? Shall the splendor and festivity of this Anniversary, so late­ly honored by thy presence and enlivened by thy smiles, make us cease to remember thee, thou blest and immortal Shade? "Remember thee? yes, from the tablets of our memories we'll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past which time and observation cop­ied there, and thy bright virtues all alone shall stand within the book and volume of our brains, unmixed with baser matter.—Yes, by heav­ens."^†—

BUT are there no dangers which threaten you? Is there no lurking spirit of apostacy which med­itates the subversion of this fair Fabric, the fruit of all your labors and of all your toils?

IF this celebration is not merely a pompous and useless ceremonial, it is my duty to hold up the mirror to the failings and vices of my country­men; to appeal to their consciences, as well as to illustrate their virtues; to depicture the abrupt precipices which endanger, as well as the verdant lawns which variegate the landscape; to exhibit the black whirlwind, the fierce tornado big with destruction, as well as the mild rainbow which beautifies the scene. We are enveloped with dan­gers, [Page 16] domestic and foreign. We have enemies without, and traitors within. We must repel the one, and restrain the other.

TO expect to be free from a domestic faction, is as mad as to look for a golden age; it is as vision­ary as the hope of universal liberty; it is as fruit­less as the search after the philosopher's stone. As in the natural, so in the political world, the Tree of Liberty cherishes its own destroyers. Although it is planted by Patriotism, and nourish­ed and protected by Loyalty, yet the destructive insects of Faction will generate and fatten upon its luxuriance, will blight, and almost destroy the very verdure which supports them. So long as men have passions, they will have vices; so long as the globe lasts, there will be distinctions in so­ciety. Nature, Education, and Fortune, are not equal in the distribution of their favors. This man is an Aristocrat in understanding, that a Jaco­bin in heart. There will always be the lazy and the industrious, the drones and the working bees; of necessity the poor and the rich, the ig­norant and the well informed. There will be ever gloomy Jealousy, suspicious of its successful neigh­bour; dark and lurking Envy, corroded by for­tunate Virtue; proud and towering Ambition, seeking elevation upon the necks of the people. The last is the "Serpent which swallows that of Aaron, and of all the rest."^*

A FREE Government is the very hot-bed of ambition. Ambition is an indigenous plant in [Page 17] Democracies, which produces and scatters its seeds like the Balsamine, and propagates with indescrib­able rapidity. In such governments, therefore, there is always a plentiful crop of Candidates for promotion; of proud and haughty claimants, as well as servile beggars of popular favor. These gormandizers of popularity are no Epicures; they have not very nice discriminating palates. They are ready to taste the sweets of every office, from the high dignity of the Presidency, down to the lowest municipal employment in the State. Still, however, with this humble spirit of accommoda­tion, they cannot all be gratified. The disappoint­ed will pursue their revenge with an acrimony proportioned to the ravenous hunger after fame which impelled them. The mortified ambitious are never in want of tools to carry on the trade of faction. The ignorant, the jealous, and the envious; the bankrupt in morals and character, and the insolvent in purse, are the small weapons, with which the great Leviathans in opposition continually operate. Review the past history of the United States, and what page is there in which the proofs of these principles are not in­scribed? Coeval with our Government has been an inveterate opposition; an opposition growing with our growth, and strengthening with our strength. At first small and feeble, it uttered its discontents only in the gentle whispers of disap­probation; now, bold, hardy, and shameless, it thunders its anathemas in the language of rebell­ion. We have remarked that faction is the spon­taneous [Page 18] production of a free soil; but like all na­tive plants, it is not destined wholly to destroy the vegetation which surrounds it. It is by the introduction of exotics alone, that the work of extermination can be effected. In vain would our domestic enemies assail the goodly Fabric of our Constitution; vain would be the calumny against our ablest Patriots; feeble and nerveless would be the assaults of our internal enemies, if they were not supported by foreign gold, and encou­raged by external assistance. Without this aid, our infant Hercules would have strangled the re­bellious reptile in his cradle. Still our young and vigorous Samson would have burst asunder the cords with which an insidious faction had bound him, if this internal foe had not entered into a Treaty of Alliance, offensive and defensive, with a foreign adversary.

TO the Mazzeian tribe of Philosophers are we indebted for the introduction of this foreign Aux­ilary. From the Treaty of 1778 to the present hour, these Gratitudinarians have stunned our ears with the magnanimity, the disinterested benevo­lence of Monarchical and Anti-Monarchical France. In former times, Gratitude was considered as a relative, personal, and rational virtue. It was a generous sentiment, flowing from the tenderest feel­ings of the heart of the person who received, to­wards one who had conferred a benefit. In the vocabulary of modern Philosophy, it has a directly opposite meaning. According to this new-light, and inhuman doctrine, we are to love the persecu­tors [Page 19] of our Patrons. We are to hate Louis the XVIth. who ordered his armies and navies to our aid, and we are to cherish the Regicides who brought his head to the scaffold. Nor does this unnatural sentiment stop here. Like the loyalty of the Vicar of Bray, it is to change with the daily storms which obscure the Parisian sky. From the King, it must be transferred to the Fayettes and Petions. From the Petions, to the Brissotines. From the Brissotines, it is to be cooped up in Robespierre alone. From Robespierre, it is to be enlarged to the Taliens. From the Taliens, to the Barthelemys. From the Barthelemys, to the Merlins and Talleyrands. From the Talleyrands, for aught we know, to Beelzebub himself, the arch fiend of Revolution. Still we could forgive this weathercock sensibility, if we could discern one ray of relief from this oppressive obligation.

BUT payments and requitals swell rather than diminish our debt. Robbery, perfidy, and mur­der from the hands of our benefactors, are, accord­ing to this new Philosophy, but fresh stimuli to these grateful sentiments.

WE could almost overlook all these absurdities, which outrage the best feelings of human nature, if it had not been insisted upon, that we should make a perpetual league and covenant with these pretended benefactors; that we should sit down and partake of their banquet; that we should sip their poisonous drugs, and "be as mad as they;" that we should throw off our ancient virtues, and array ourselves in the disgusting habiliments of [Page 20] their vices; that we should discard our own Re­ligion, and become proselytes to their Atheistical System, as intolerant as it is blasphemous.

THE Gallic faction in this country would not have merited so full a share of our execration, if they had contented themselves with echoing in sonorous plaudits, the bombastic details of French victories, or if they had confined themselves to the patriotic pleasure of degrading their own country, by attributing its Freedom and Independence to the arms and generosity of France. But they have done it an injury which I fear may be irreparable; they have inflicted a wound in the bosom of their Parent, of which she "languishes, and languishing may die." By propagating the disorganizing, de­moralizing, atheistical principles of France; by inculcating the holy right of Insurrection; by jus­tifying the inhuman and savage atrocities which have disgraced the French Revolution; by ap­plauding her perfidious violations of the Laws of Nations; by encouraging venal presses in the pay, or under the influence of France; by promoting and cultivating a spirit of audacious calumny against every Patriot, distinguished by his virtue and his talents; by introducing, republishing, and scattering the immoral, irreligious, and deleterious productions of Condorcet, of Volney, of Paine, and of Godwin; and lastly, and worst of all, by establishing secret, affiliated societies, which have organized opposition, which have systematized treason, which have marshalled all the vices of mankind against law and order; and which, al­though [Page 21] they were banished from the public eye, and driven into their lurking places by the virtu­ous frowns of our WASHINGTON, have been busi­ly employed in sapping the foundations of society, and may ere long spring a mine, which shall blow up our Constitution and Liberties.

SUCH are the domestic dangers which threaten our repose. Our external hazards are not less im­minent or less obvious. To say that France threat­ens our subversion—that she meditates the de­struction of our liberties—that she has long waged an open, and carried on a secret war against our Rights and our Independence, would be but to repeat the language of every honest American, for these two years past, would be but the detail of her aggressions and her outrages. Does any man doubt that France is imitating the policy of Philip of Macedon, or of the Roman Republicans? Does he question whether the stupendous schemes of Universal Conquest, conceived by Louis XIV. are received by his more ambitious and tyrannical successors, the Directory of France? Let him ask the enslaved Batavians, who are tasting Gallic Free­dom under the Pike and the Halbert. Let him in­quire of the oppressed Belgians who have been im­pelled to the madness of desperation, and to open rebellion, against their savage and ferocious op­pressors. Let him mingle with the unhappy Ge­nevans, and compare their present ruinous free­dom with their former prosperous slavery. Let him peruse the history of Venice emancipated from the pretended tyranny of its Doge, and its aris­tocracy [Page 22] to be sold, by its perfidious deliverers, like an African slave, or like an inanimate chattel. If he still doubts, let him apply to the wretched in­habitants of Switzerland, whose valour was only equalled by their happiness; whose freedom and independence were only rivalled by their justice, moderation, good faith, and love of peace. They can inform him of the tender mercies of Frenchmen. The peasants of Switzerland can exhibit the iron chests from whence the fruits of their la­bor have been plundered by their generous eman­cipators. They can point to their beautiful daugh­ters, brutally defiled by these friends to the Rights of Man. They can lead him to the ensanguined vallies, where whole hecatombs of Freemen were immolated by Gallic worshippers, to the ferocious Goddess of Equality.

WHAT hopes have we then to escape this raven­ous, this insatiable Monster, whose support is plun­der, whose nutriment is carnage, whose pastime is to inflict human wretchedness? Have we any reason to expect its forbearance, to hope for its friendship, to trust to its moderation, or to confide in its justice? I ask you, my mercantile friends, whose ships and whose cargoes the French have taken into their disinterested keeping. I appeal to you, my honest, hardy, and brave seamen and fel­low citizens, who have experienced their generos­ity in nakedness, and hunger, their freedom in a dungeon, and their tenderness in stripes, and at the end of their sabres.

[Page 23]BUT there are some of the honest part of my fel­low citizens, who are yet dupes to their diplo­matic skill. Swayed by a dastardly love of peace, awed by the unmanly terrors of hostility, they are too prone to give credence to their persidious and deceitful professions. They are weak enough to believe that a sudden and miraculous conversion has overtaken these political reprobates: That, abandoning their love of conquest, and of plunder, as a Serpent casts his skin, or a Harlequin his coat, these pious and disinterested philosophers are sin­cerely disposed to bury past dissensions, to over­look, generous friends! to overlook the injuries we have done to them, and to bestow upon us as a retribution for plundered millions, the kiss fra­ternal, and profitable and honorable mention in the bulletin of the Grand Republiquè.

TO such men, I cannot better reply, than by a reference to the sentiments of our beloved Presi­dent, in his late public answers and declarations— a man who is as much above praise as the Directory of France are beyond execration. "Although (says▪ that great Statesman) our government has exhausted all the resources of its policy, in endeav­ors to avoid engaging in the present uproar,— neither the Faith, Justice, or Gratitude of France would suffer it to succeed." "In my opinion as well as yours, there is no alternative, between war and submission to France." "You see that neither justice nor moderation can secure us from a par­ticipation in the war, which has agitated Europe." "America is of too much importance, for the pur­poses [Page 24] of wealth, and power, to leave her the smallest hope of escaping, without her own determined ex­ertions, the contagion of the general distemper."

SUCH are the sentiments of the first Statesman in our Country. Sentiments so just, and truths so momentous, cannot be too extensively embraced, or too carefully cherished, to guard the public mind against false hopes of pacification. Assailed by the insidious arts of that Machiavelian Cabinet; courted and solicited to renew the disgraceful train of delusive negociations; the President nobly spurned the Olive-branch, under the leaves of which was concealed a Dagger. He knew that the Serpent had power to charm the bird which it des­tined for its prey. He was aware that the "Ty­ger crouches before he leaps upon his victim." He refused to permit his ministers even to pass over to France, until they should have assurances that they should be received, respected, and hon­ored, as the Representatives of a great, free, and independent Nation.

BUT, Americans, why should you indulge this meek, dastardly anxiety and solicitude for peace, which you know must be delusive? Where is fled the magnanimous and unconquerable spirit of your forefathers? Where the courage, where the hero­ism which animated the Patriots of 1776? Have you not hands and hearts, as well as they? And does not your pulse beat as high for your Rights and Independence, as theirs? Which of you is ready to abandon his altar, or his fire-side? Will you, my military friends, tamely surrender the honor of your [Page 25] country, with▪ our gleaming bayonets unsheathed, and with your trusty swords by your sides? Will you, my youthful brethren, calmly behold those revolutionizing Gauls violating that innocence, which GOD and Nature require you to protect? Suppose we should make peace with these rapacious Philosophers—Think you it would be safe, perma­nent, or profitable? If you entertain an idea so vis­ionary, you know not the enemy you must yet en­counter. Has she changed her ferocious and ambi­tious disposition? No. Is she less hostile towards the United States? No. What has prompted her to extend the Caduceus, to proffer the olive-branch, to exhibit a new affectation of friendly sentiments? I answer, Our own Jacobin faction; our self-created Ambassadors; our Dr. Logans, and our Joel Bar­lows! What are the real views of our external and internal enemies, in promoting peace? I reply, To restore the lost influence of France; to introduce a fresh host of her myrmidons; to raise the expir­ing spirit of Jacobinism, and the courage and con­sequence of its professors; to support new Minis­ters and new Consuls to insult us, and usurp our Sovereignty; to bribe new Chronicles and new Auroras; and finally, to establish a Parisian Re­public upon the ruins of our Government!

WHAT our enemies so ardently wish, must be our bane—what they dread, must be its antidote. Let us then heroically meet our danger in the face. Let us discard the dangerous idea of false, prema­ture, and dishonorable Peace. Bountiful Heaven has blessed us with a Country rich in resources, [Page 26] exuberant in productions; let them not remain neglected and useless. Our citizens are numerous, enterprising and brave. Let us then proclaim our Rights from the mouths of our Cannon. Let us treat with Frenchmen, only at the points of our bay­onets. Already our Commerce sails protected over the Ocean; already our stripes and stars, heretofore disgraced, wave triumphant over the tri-coloured flag of our enemies.

THEN shall our Navy ride triumphant in every clime, and future TRUXTONS be victors of the Nile. Discard a mean, parsimonious policy, a dis­graceful calculation of pecuniary interests—Then we should not want able and courageous defend­ers—Then, should Gallic lightning assail us, "Our WASHINGTON, unmoved, would conduct, with his sword, every flash to the deep."^†—Then these sacred Altars of the Most High should be secured from profanation; your wives from defilement, and your children from slaughter—Then should United America join in one choral gratulation of "ADAMS, LAW, AND LIBERTY." [Page 27] Then—