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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 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:
We would not seek a battle as we are;
Yet, as we are, we say we will not shun it:
And so go tell your masters, Frenchman.”
end of remarks on the blunderbuss.
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