Essential Writings Volume 1. William 1763-1835 Cobbett

execution of these measures gives rise to complaints in the United States, it is not against France they should be directed, but against those men, who have entered into negotiations contrary to the interests of their country.”

      Just as if he had said, pointing to the President, the Senate, and Officers of State: ‘There they are; rise on them, cut their throats, and choose others more pliant to our will.’—His words do not amount to this, ’tis true; but in his country a hint far less intelligible would have been perfectly understood, and would not have failed of the desired effect. Happily he was not haranguing a Parisian mob. Whatever foolish partiality some of us may have had, and may yet have for France, nature has been so kind as not to make us Frenchmen.

      In the reign of Queen Anne, when a Tory Ministry, aided by an intriguing Frenchman, were treating for a separate peace with Louis XIV., the Imperial Minister, Count Gallas, in order to prepossess the people of England against the peace, caused the transaction to be published, as an article of news, in one of the daily papers. This step, though it could not be looked upon as an appeal to the people, was so much resented by the Queen, that she ordered him to quit the kingdom immediately; and in this she was supported by the unanimous voice of the nation; who, notwithstanding they disapproved of a peace which was to sacrifice the great advantages obtained by their arms under the immortal Duke of Marlborough, justly and manfully resented the attempt of a foreign minister to step in between them and their own sovereign, however blamable her measures might be.

      Such is the situation of America with respect to the insidious, unprincipled, insolent, and perfidious 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.