And who has forgotten the diligence of the opposers, the moment the treaty was published? Did they give it time to circulate? Did they let it come before the people as public acts in general do, and leave them to form a fair and unprejudiced opinion on it? On the contrary, was not every spring put in motion to prepossess them; to fix in their minds a hatred to the measure, that truth would not be able to remove? How can we account for individuals quitting their homes, neglecting their business, and sacrificing to appearance, their interests, to carry this instrument to the extremities of the Union, and there form combinations against it in order to intimidate the President from a ratification?
Will any one believe, then, that the President, with this on his mind, stood in need of British influence to determine on a ratification? What other determination could he possibly take? Was he, though he saw the pit open before his eyes, to plunge headlong into it? Was he, after having discovered the conspiracy, tamely to yield to its machinations, and assist in the ruin of his country? There was but one course for him to pursue to make the Government respected, and blast all the hopes of the conspirators, and that was to ratify the Treaty. By this act he preserved to us the inestimable blessings of peace, gave stability to the Constitution, not only for one, but for many sessions, by a legal and manly exercise of the powers it has vested in him, convinced the French that the interests of the Union are not to be sacrificed to her vengeance and caprice, and showed to the whole world, that we wish to live in friendship with all nations, but that we are determined to be the slaves of none. And yet this act, Mr. Randolph would persuade us, was the work of a British faction!
Thus has the Vindicator failed in all his attempts. On the article of corruption, of which we before doubted, we now doubt no longer; and as to his indirect accusation against the President, it only serves to show that one who, with unblushing front, can ask a bribe, will never be ashamed to publish his ingratitude and apostacy.
REMARKS ON THE BLUNDERBUSS.
Note by the Editors.—The “Remarks on the Blunderbuss,” is a paper contained in the sixth number of the “Political Censor,” and it consists of an answer to a long string of accusations against the President and Government of America by the French Minister Adet, in consequence of the Treaty with England. It closes that affair. We have seen that the French ministers, Genet and Fauchet, attempted to enlist America on the side of France by divers means, and we have seen how they failed. We here see that their successor, Adet, attempted to move some internal strife by way of punishment to Washington’s Government for the course which it pursued with regard to the Treaty. Adet published his notes, in the American newspapers as a kind of appeal to the people; and Mr. Cobbett collected them in the fifth number of the “Political Censor,” giving them the title of the “Gros Mousqueton Diplomatique;” or, “Diplomatic Blunderbuss;” to which he prefixed the following Preface.
PREFACE.
When we see an unprincipled, shameless bully, “A dog in forehead, and in heart a deer,” who endeavours, by means of a big look, a threatening aspect, and a thundering voice, to terrify peaceable men into a compliance with what he has neither a right to demand, nor power nor courage to enforce, and who, at the same time, acts in such a bungling, stupid manner, as to excite ridicule and contempt in place of fear; when we see such a gasconading, impudent bluff as this (and that we do every day), we call him a Blunderbuss. But, the reader will not, I hope, have conceived me so devoid of all decency and prudence, as to imagine, even for a moment, that it is in this degrading sense that the name of Blunderbuss has been given to the invaluable collection which I here present to the public. Indeed, it is so evident that I could mean no such thing, that this declaration seems hardly necessary; but, as my poor old grandmother used to say, “A burnt child dreads the fire,” and after the unrelenting severities of misconception and misconstruction, that a humane and commiserating public have so often seen me endure, they will think it very natural for me to fear, that what I really intended as a compliment, would, if left unexplained, be tortured into insult and abuse, if not into the horrid crime of lèze-republicanism, at the very idea of which my hair stands on end, and my heart dies within me.
“But,” cry the democrats, “in what sense, then, do you apply the word Blunderbuss? Come, come, Mr. Peter, none of your shuffling.”—Silence, you yelping devils; go, growl in your dark kennel; slink into your straw, and leave me to my reader: I’ll warrant I explain myself to his satisfaction.
Writings of a hostile nature are often metaphorically expressed, in proportion to the noise they make, by different instruments that act by explosion. Thus it is, for instance, that an impotent lampoon is called a Popgun; and that a biting paragraph or epigram, confined to a small circle, is termed a squib; and thus it is, that, rising in due progression, the collection of Citizen Adet’s Notes and Cockade Proclamation is denominated a Blunderbuss, a species of fire-arms that exceeds all others, manageable by a single hand, in the noise of its discharge.
If we pursue the metaphor, we shall find the application still more strikingly happy. The first Note is a kind of preparative for the Cockade Proclamation, and this latter adjusts matters for the grand explosion; or, in the military style,—
Make Ready!
Present!
Fire!
To be sure we are not dead, but this circumstance, instead of mutilating my metaphor, renders it complete; for of all the long list of fire-arms, none is so difficult to adjust, or makes so much noise and smoke, with so little execution, as a Blunderbuss.
This is the first time, I believe, that a Preface ever turned its eyes backwards, and talked about the title till there was no room left to say a word about the book. Indeed the book stands in little need of commendation, or of any thing else, except what I am determined shortly to bestow on it, in a manner worthy of its merits.
In the succeeding number, he answered the charges which it contains against the President and his Government. The paper contains the substance of Adet’s charges, as well as the answer, so that we need not insert the official notes of the French Minister. As this paper closes the affair of the British Treaty, we have taken it a little out of its order in the original work, and shall give in our next number a paper written in answer to attacks on Mr. Cobbett, which, strictly following chronological order, should have come in before this one. The “Remarks” contain one argument which we think will of itself repay the reader; we mean that on the doctrine of allegiance, which is so correctly stated that it would do credit to the soundest lawyer or statesman, as is fully verified by the fact, that numerous decisions have been made by the courts of law in England and America since it was written, all of which agree in the principles here laid down. It is put to the reader in so plain, so forcible, and so eloquent a manner, that, if nothing more, it is a model of good writing, and therefore deserves to be preserved.
To Correspondents.—As nothing is more gratifying than the applause, or profitable than the admonition, of good men, I have reason to congratulate myself on an abundance of both: but as applause ought never to be purchased with money, and as admonition is a commodity that every one is ready to bestow gratis, I must request that future communications of this kind may come to me post free.—I also beg leave to hint to those who give me advice, which they wish I should follow, not to do it in too dictatorial a style; for, if I have any good qualities, docility, I am afraid, is not to be numbered amongst them.
The moment the Gallic usurpers had murdered their sovereign, and, from the vilest walks in life, mounted into his seat, they assumed the tone of masters to the Government of the United States. Their style has softened, it is true; but the general tenor of it has regularly approached towards that loftiest note, that ne plus ultra of insolence, which it attained in Citizen Adet’s last communications.
In offering my sentiments on these arrogant effusions of upstart tyranny, I feel an unusual degree of diffidence: a diffidence that does not arise from any fear I entertain of the citizen or his factious adherents, or even of the “terrible nation,” to use his own