I say force them; because,
willingly, they would never be at peace. The British ministers find in
a state of war rather than of peace, by riding the various contractors,
and receiving douceurs on the vast expenditures of the war supplies,
that they recruit their broken fortunes, or make new ones, and therefore
will not make peace, as long as by any delusions they can keep the
temper of the nation up to the war point. They found some hopes on
the state of our finances. It is true, that the excess of our banking
institutions, and their present discredit, have shut us out from the
best source of credit we could ever command with certainty. But the
foundations of credit still remain to us, and need but skill, which
experience will soon produce, to marshal them into an order which may
carry us through any length of war. But they have hoped more in their
Hartford Convention. Their fears of republican France being now done
away, they are directed to republican America, and they are playing the
same game for disorganization here, which they played in your country.
The Marats, the Dantons, and Robespierres of Massachusetts are in
the same pay, under the same orders, and making the same efforts to
anarchize us, that their prototypes in France did there.
I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motives of
money: nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs, and wish to
be Ins; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of their own party
passions; while the Maratists alone are in the real secret: but they
have very different materials to work on.
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