under the tutelage of the former, and recall the glorious times of violence and plunder. Thanks to Government; thanks to the steady conduct of the executive power, this abominable plan has been disconcerted; the phalanx has been broken; but it is nevertheless prudent to pursue the scattered remains, draw them from their caballing assemblies, and stretch them on the rack of public contempt. Ref 026
I do not know whether there were any of the United Irishmen, or their retainers, at the last St. Patrick’s feast, in this city; but I know that they drank to the memory of “Brutus and Franklin (a pretty couple), to the Society of the United Irishmen, to the French, and to their speedy arrival in Ireland.” After this, I think it would be cruel to doubt of the patriotism of the United Irishmen, and their attachment to the British constitution.
In these toasting times it would have been something wonderful if the sans culottes in America had neglected to celebrate the taking of Amsterdam by their brethren in France. I believe from my soul there have been more cannons fired here in the celebration of this conquest, than the French fired in achieving it. I think I have counted twenty-two grand civic festivals, fifty-one of an inferior order, and one hundred and ninety-three public dinners; at all which, I imagine, there might be nearly thirty thousand people; and as twenty thousand of them, or thereabouts, must have been married men, it is reasonable to suppose that eighteen or nineteen thousand women with their children were at home wanting bread, while their husbands were getting drunk at a civic feast.
There is in general such a sameness in those feasts, that it would be tiring the reader to describe them; and it would, besides, be anticipating what I intend to treat more at large, as soon as my materials for the purpose are collected. The grand civic festival at Reading (Massachusetts), however, deserves a particular mention, as it approaches nearer to a real French civic feast than any thing I have yet heard of in this country.
“The day was ushered in by the ringing of the bells, and a salute of fifteen discharges from a field-piece. The American flag waved in the wind, and the flag of France over the British in inverted order. At noon a large number of respectable citizens assembled at citizen Rayner’s, and partook of an elegant entertainment—after dinner Captain Emerson’s military company in uniform assembled, and escorted the citizens” (to the grog-shop, I suppose, you think?) “to the meeting-house!! where an address, pertinent to the occasion, was delivered by the Reverend citizen Prentiss, and united prayers and praises were offered to God, and several hymns and anthems were well sung; after which they returned in procession to citizen Rayner’s, when three farmers with their frocks and utensils, and with a tree on their shoulders, were escorted by the military company, formed in a hollow square, to the common, where the tree was planted in form, as an emblem of freedom, and the Marseillois hymn was sung by a choir within a circle round the tree. Major Bondman, by request, superintended the business of the day, and directed the manœuvres.”
These manœuvres were very curious to be sure, particularly that of the Reverend citizen Prentiss, putting up a long snuffing prayer for the successes of the French atheists! A pretty minister truly! There was nothing wanted to complete this feast but to burn the Bible, and massacre the honest inhabitants of the town. And are these the children of those men who fled from their native country to a desert, rather than deviate from what they conceived to be the true principles of the gospel? Are they such men as Prentiss, to whom the people of Massachusetts commit the education of their children and the care of their own souls? God forgive me if I go too far, but I think I would as soon commit my soul to the care of the devil.
Nor was the Reverend citizen Prentiss the only one who took upon him to mock Heaven with thanksgivings for the successes of the French sans culottes. From Boston they write: “It was highly pleasing to republicans to hear some of our clergy yesterday returning thanks to the Supreme Being for the successes of the good sans culottes.” Yes, reader, some of the clergy of Boston put up thanksgivings for what they imagined to be the successes of a set of impious wretches, who have in the most solemn manner abolished the religion these very clergymen profess, who have declared Christianity to be a farce, and its Founder an infamous impostor, and who have represented the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as a mere cheat, contrived by artful priests to enslave mankind. There is but too much reason to fear that many of those whose duty it is to stand on the watch-tower, whose duty it is to resist this pernicious doctrine, are among the first to espouse it; but let the clergymen of Boston remember—
“That those whose impious hands are join’d
From Heaven the thunderbolt to wrest,
Shall, when their crimes are finished, find,
That death is not eternal rest.”
But they tell us that it is because the French are true republicans, that we ought to applaud them. What a sarcasm on republicanism! As if fire and sword, prisons and scaffolds, the destruction of cities, the abolition of all religious worship, the inculcation of a doctrine which leads to every crime, stifles remorse, and prevents a return to justice and humanity, were the characteristics of a true republic. If it be so, we ought to blush to call ourselves republicans.
Some of the democratic tribe have cried aloud against me, for speaking of the Dutch and French under the names of Nick Frog and the Baboon; but let them remember, that while they talk about John Bull, I must, and will be permitted to keep up the allegory, Ref 027 particularly at a time when it is become more strikingly à-propos than ever. “Jupiter,” says the fable, “sent the frogs a log of wood Ref 028 to reign over them; but a bull being let loose in the pasture, and having trod the guts of a few of them out, they set up a terrible outcry against the stupidity and negligence of king log. Jupiter tired at last with their everlasting croakings, and determined to punish them for their ingratitude to his anointed log, sent them a huge baboon that gobbled them up by hundreds at a meal.”
Patriot Paine, the heathen philosopher, has observed that republics never marry. There is more humour than truth in this observation; for though one would imagine that the name of sister which they give to each other would be an insuperable bar to such an union, yet experience proves the contrary; for the French republic does not only marry, but is guilty of polygamy. She has already espoused the republic of Batavia (commonly called Holland), and the poor little Geneva, and she is now swaggering about like a Jack wh—e with a couple of under punks at her heels. She wanted to make love to the cheek of John Bull, but John, beast as he is, had too much grace to be seduced by her. “No,” said John, “you heathenish cannibal, I will not touch you; you reek with blood; get from my sight, you stabbing strumpet!” John was half right; for she is indeed a cruel spouse; something like the brazen image formerly made use of in Hungary, that cracked the bones, and squeezed out the blood and guts of those who were condemned to its embraces.
How happy were we in escaping a marriage with a termagant like this! we were, indeed, within an inch of it. Brissot and his crew sent out one of their citizens Ref 029 (who had been employed with so much success in negotiating the marriage with Geneva) to marry us by proxy, and the democrats were beginning to sing “Come haste to the wedding,” when the president, who had not burnt his bible, saw that the laws of consanguinity did not allow of a marriage between two sisters, and therefore, like a good old father of his country, he peremptorily forbad the bans. Heavens bless him for it! if he had not done this, we might long ago have seen the citizen inviting the Congress, as Pichegru does the Dutch assembly, to send him five hundred oxen for breakfast. He had already begun to scamper about our streets with his sans culottes dragoons (among whom, be it remembered, some of our democrats were base enough to enrol themselves), and he would by this time, perhaps, have ordered us, and not without reason, to call Philadelphia, Commune Affranchie.
The Convention, finding that we were not to be won by this boorish kind of courtship, began to send us billets-doux to soothe us into compliance. Among these, that which invites us to change our weights and measures Ref 030 is remarkable enough to merit a particular notice.
