3rd. To form a treaty of commerce with Great Britain is dangerous, he says, because “it is forming a connection with a monarch, and the introduction of the fashions, forms, and precedents of monarchical governments, has ever accelerated the destruction of republics.” To suppose this man in earnest would be to believe him guided by something below even the imbecility of a frenchified republican. It would be to suppose him almost upon a level with a member from the southward, who gave his vote against a law, merely because it appeared to him to be of monarchical origin, while at the same moment he represented a state, Ref 037 whose declaration of rights says: “The good people are entitled to the common law of England, and the trial by jury, according to the course of that law, and to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their emigration, and which, by experience, have been found applicable to their local and other circumstances, and of such others as have been since made in England, or Great Britain, and have been introduced here, &c.” Can the people who have been so careful in preventing their future rulers from depriving them of the benefit of the laws of England, who look upon the being governed by those laws as the most inestimable of their rights, be afraid of introducing among them the fashions, forms, and precedents of England? Can it be possible, that they are afraid of introducing among them what they already possess, and what they declare they will never part with?
It is not my object to intrude on you my opinion of the fashions, forms and precedents, as Franklin calls them, of the British Government; they may be better or they may be worse than other governments; but be they what they may, they are nearly the same as your own, and they are the only ones ever adopted by any nation on earth to which yours bear the most distant resemblance; therefore, admitting, for a moment, what Franklin says to be true, “that you should make treaties with no nation whose fashions and forms are different from your own,” it follows of course, that, if you ought not on this account to make treaties with Great Britain, you ought to do it with no nation in the world.
But this would not suit the purpose of Franklin, who, at the same time that he reprobates the idea of making a treaty with Great Britain, inculcates the propriety and even necessity of making one with France. “If foreign connections are to be formed,” says he, “they ought to be made with nations whose influence and example would not poison the fountain of liberty, and circulate the deleterious streams to the destruction of the rich harvest of our revolution—tell me your company, and I will tell you who you are.” And then he tells us, that “there is not a nation in Europe, with an established government, whose example should be our imitation, but that France is our natural ally; that she has a government congenial with our own, and that there can be no hazard of introducing from her, principles and practices repugnant to freedom.” Take care what you are about, Mr. Franklin! If there be none of the established governments in Europe congenial to your own, the inevitable conclusion is, that neither you nor your sister republic have an established government! Do you begin to perceive the fatal effects of your want of memory?
But, are you governed by an assembly of ignorant caballing legislators? An assembly of Neros, whose pastime is murder, who have defied the God of Heaven, and, in idea, have snatched the thunder from his hand to hurl it on a crouching people? And do you resemble the republican French? Have you cast off the very semblance of virtue and religion? Do you indeed resemble those men of blood, those profligate infidels, who, uniting the frivolity of the monkey to the ferocity of the tiger, can go dancing to the gallows, or butchering their relations to the air of ah! ca ira? If you do, you have not much to fear from the introduction of the fashions, forms, and precedents of other nations.
Another source of danger, that Franklin has had the sagacity to discover in treating with Great Britain, is, that she “meditates your subjugation, and a treaty will give her a footing amongst you which she had not before, and facilitate her plans.” The executive council of France ordered citizen Genet to tell you something of this sort, in order to induce you to embark in the war for the liberty and happiness of mankind. “In this situation of affairs,” says the executive council, “when the military preparations in Great Britain become every day more serious, we ought to excite, by all possible means, the zeal of the Americans, who are as much interested as ourselves in disconcerting the destructive projects of George III., in which they are probably an object.” I beseech you to pay attention to this passage of the instructions. When military preparations were making against France, she wanted your aid, and so the good citizen was ordered to tell you that you were the object of those preparations. The citizen was ordered to tell you a falsehood; for the war has now continued three years, and George III. has not made the least attempt against your independence.
You have the surest of all guarantees that Great Britain will never attempt any thing against your independence, her interest. I agree with Franklin, that “her interest is the main-spring of all her actions, and that, had not her interest been implicated, the commercial relation between you and her would long since have been destroyed.” Her interest will ever dictate to her to keep up that relation, and certainly making an attempt on your independence is not the way to do that; for, as to her succeeding in such an attempt, I think every American will look on that as impossible. The idea of your “again becoming colonies of Great Britain,” may be excused in Franklin and the other stipendiaries of the French republic; but an American, who holds the good of his country in higher estimation than a bundle of assignats, and who entertains such a disgraceful belief, must have the head of an idiot and the heart of a coward.
Besides, has not our demagogue himself given a very good reason for your having nothing to apprehend from Great Britain? “Happily for this country,” says he, “the days of that corrupt monarchy are numbered; for already has the impetuous valour of our insulted French brethren rushed like a torrent upon the Dutch Provinces, and swept away the dykes of aristocracy. Perhaps Heaven will direct their next steps to Great Britain itself, and by one decisive stroke, relieve the world from the miseries which that corrupt government has too long entailed upon mankind.” I shall not stop here to prove, that it was not an act of a corrupt government to frame such laws, as the people of these states have bound their rulers never to depart from; nor have I time to prove, that peopling the United States, changing an uncouth wilderness into an extensive and flourishing empire, in little more than a century, was not entailing miseries upon mankind. I hasten to my subject; and, I think, I need take no great deal of pains to prove to you, that, if Great Britain be in the situation in which Franklin has described her, you have very little to fear from her. A nation whose “days are numbered,” and particularly who is in continual expectation of a domiciliary visit from the French, is rather to be pitied than feared.
And yet this same Franklin, who tells you that the “days of Great Britain are numbered, that she is upon the point of annihilation, and that nothing can save her but repentance in sackcloth and ashes;” this same Franklin who says all this, and much more to the same purpose; this same Franklin winds up almost every one of his letters in declaring, that you have every thing to fear from her, and that nothing on earth can save you but France! “That gallant nation, whose proffers we have neglected, is the sheet-anchor who sustains our hopes, and should her glorious exertions be incompetent to the great object she has in view, we have little to flatter ourselves with from the faith, honour, or justice of Great Britain. The nation on whom our political existence depends we have treated with indifference bordering on contempt.—Citizens, your only security depends upon France, and by the conduct of your government, that security has become precarious.” Now before I go any further, I shall bring another sentence from Franklin, which will certainly give you a favourable idea of the veracity and consistency of that demagogue. “Insulated as we are, not an enemy near to excite apprehension, and our products such as are indispensable, we need neither the countenance of other countries, nor their support!” What, no enemy near to excite apprehension, no need of support, and yet “France is the sheet-anchor of your hopes!” and yet “your political existence depends upon her,” and yet, because your government has refused to make a common cause with her, “your security has become precarious:” To a hireling writer nothing is so necessary as memory.
If Great Britain had really
