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Page 18
Perhaps there never was an alliance on a broader basis, than that
between America and France, and the progress of it is worth attending
to. The countries had been enemies, not properly of themselves, but
through the medium of England. They, originally, had no quarrel with
each other, nor any cause for one, but what arose from the interest of
England, and her arming America against France. At the same time, the
Americans, at a distance from and unacquainted with the world, and
tutored in all the prejudices which governed those who governed them,
conceived it their duty to act as they were taught. In doing this
they expended their substance to make conquests, not for themselves,
but for their masters, who in return, treated them as slaves.
A long succession of insolent severity, and the separation finally
occasioned by the commencement of hostilities at Lexington, on the
19th of April, 1775, naturally produced a new disposition of thinking.
As the mind closed itself towards England, it opened itself toward the
world; and our prejudices, like our oppressions, underwent, though
less observed, a mental examination; until we found the former as
inconsistent with reason and benevolence, as the latter were repugnant
to our civil and political rights.
While we were thus advancing by degrees into the wide field of
extended humanity, the alliance with France was concluded; an alliance
not formed for the mere purpose of a day, but on just and generous
grounds, and with equal and mutual advantages; and the easy
affectionate manner in which the parties have since communicated, has
made it an alliance, not of courts only, but of countries. There is
now an union of mind as well as of interest; and our hearts as well as
our prosperity, call on us to support it.
The people of England not having experienced this change, had likewise
no ideas of it, they were hugging to their bosoms the same prejudices
we were trampling beneath our feet; and they expected to keep a hold
upon America, by that narrowness of thinking which America disdained.
What they were proud of, we despised: and this is a principal cause
why all their negotiations, constructed on this ground, have failed.
We are now really another people, and cannot again go back to
ignorance and prejudice. The mind once enlightened cannot again become
dark. There is no possibility, neither is there any term to express
the supposition by, of the mind unknowing any thing it already knows;
and therefore all attempts on the part of England, fitted to the
former habit of America, and on the expectation of their applying now,
will be like persuading a seeing man to become blind, and a sensible
one to turn an idiot. The first of which is unnatural and the other
impossible.
As to the remark which the Abbe makes on the one country being a
monarchy and the other a republic, it can have no essential meaning.
Forms of government have nothing to do with treaties. The former are
the internal police of the countries severally; the latter their
external police jointly: and so long as each performs its part, we
have no more right or business to know how the one or the other
conducts its domestic affairs, than we have to inquire into the
private concerns of a family.
But had the Abbe reflected for a moment, he would have seen that
courts, or the governing powers of all countries, be their forms what
they may, are relatively republics with each other. It is the first
and true principle of alliancing. Antiquity may have given precedence,
and power will naturally create importance, but their equal right is
never disputed. It may likewise be worthy of remarking, that a
monarchical country can suffer nothing in its popular happiness by an
alliance with a republican one; and republican governments have never
been destroyed by their external connections, but by some internal
convulsion or contrivance. France has been in alliance with the
republic of Switzerland for more than two hundred years, and still
Switzerland retains her original form as entire as if she had allied
with a republic like herself; therefore this remark of the Abbe should
go for nothing.--Besides, it is best mankind should mix. There is ever
something to learn, either of manners or principle; and it is by a
free communication, without regard to domestic matters, that
friendship is to be extended, and prejudice destroyed all over the
world.
But notwithstanding the Abbe's high professions in favour of liberty,
he appears sometimes to forget himself, or that his theory is rather
the child of his fancy than of his judgment: for in almost the same
instant that he censures the alliance, as not originally or
sufficiently calculated for the happiness of mankind, he, by a figure
of implication, accuses France for having acted so generously and
unreservedly in concluding it. "Why did they (says he, meaning the
Court of France) tie themselves down by an inconsiderate treaty to
conditions with the Congress, which they might themselves have held in
dependence by ample and regular supplies."
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