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Page 21
After caviling at the treaty, he goes on to characterize the several
parties combined in the war.--"Is it possible," says the Abbe, "that a
strict union should long subsist amongst confederates of characters so
opposite as the hasty, light, disdainful Frenchman, the jealous,
haughty, sly, slow, circumspect Spaniard, and the American, who is
secretly snatching looks at the mother country, and would rejoice,
were they compatible with his independence, at the disasters of his
allies?"
To draw foolish portraits of each other, is a mode of attack and
reprisal, which the greater part of mankind are fond of indulging. The
serious philosopher should be above it, more especially in cases from
which no possible good can arise, and mischief may, and where no
received provocation can palliate the offense.--The Abbe might have
invented a difference of character for every country in the world, and
they in return might find others for him, till in the war of wit all
real character is lost. The pleasantry of one nation or the gravity of
another may, by a little penciling, be distorted into whimsical
features, and the painter becomes so much laughed at as the painting.
But why did not the Abbe look a little deeper, and bring forth the
excellencies of the several parties? Why did he not dwell with
pleasure on that greatness of character, that superiority of heart,
which has marked the conduct of France in her conquests, and which has
forced an acknowledgment even from Britain.
There is one line, at least (and many others might be discovered), in
which the confederates unite; which is, that of a rival eminence in
their treatment of their enemies. Spain, in her conquest of Minorca
and the Bahama Islands, confirms this remark. America has been
invariable in her lenity from the beginning of the war,
notwithstanding the high provocations she has experienced? It is
England only who has been insolent and cruel.
But why must America be charged with a crime undeserved by her
conduct, more so by her principles, and which, if a fact, would be
fatal to her honour? I mean the want of attachment to her allies, or
rejoicing in their disasters. She, it is true, has been assiduous in
showing to the world that she was not the aggressor toward England;
and that the quarrel was not of her seeking, or, at that time, even of
her wishing. But to draw inferences from her justification, to stab
her character by, and I see nothing else from which they can be
supposed to be drawn, is unkind and unjust.
Does her rejection of the British propositions in 1778, before she
knew of any alliance with France, correspond with the Abbe's
description of her mind? Does a single instance of her conduct since
that time justify it?--But there is a still better evidence to apply
to, which is, that of all the mails which at different times have been
way-laid on the road, in divers parts of America, and taken and
carried into New-York, and from which the most secret and confidential
private letters, as well as those from authority, have been published,
not one of them, I repeat it, not a single one of them, gives
countenance to such a charge.
This is not a country where men are under government restraint in
speaking; and if there is any kind of restraint, it arises from a fear
of popular resentment. Now, if nothing in her private or public
correspondence favours such a suggestion, and if the general
disposition of the country is such as to make it unsafe for a man to
shew an appearance of joy at any disaster to her ally; on what
grounds, I ask, can the accusation stand? What company the Abbe may
have kept in France, we cannot know; but this we know, that the
account he gives does not apply to America.
Had the Abbe been in America at the time the news arrived of the
disaster of the fleet under Count de Grasse, in the West-Indies, he
would have seen his vast mistake. Neither do I remember any instance,
except the loss of Charlestown, in which the public mind suffered more
severe and pungent concern, or underwent more agitations of hope and
apprehension, as to the truth or falsehood of the report. Had the loss
been all our own, it could not have had a deeper effect; yet it was
not one of those cases which reached to the independence of America.
In the geographical account which the Abbe gives of the Thirteen
States, he is so exceedingly erroneous, that to attempt a particular
refutation, would exceed the limits I have prescribed to myself. And
as it is a matter neither political, historical, nor sentimental, and
which can always be contradicted by the extent and natural
circumstances of the country, I shall pass it over; with this
additional remark, that I never yet saw an European description of
America that was true, neither can any person gain a just idea of it,
but by coming to it.
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