Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4Jefferson, Thomas
History
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
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. The yeomanry of the United
States are not the canaille of Paris. We might safely give them leave to
go through the United States recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied
they could not raise one single regiment (gambling merchants and
silk-stocking clerks excepted), who would support them in any effort to
separate from the Union. The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood
of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government
established on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in
Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens
will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incendiaries.
If they could have induced the government to some effort of suppression,
or even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given them
some importance, have brought them into some notice. But they have not
been able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of
public or private societies. A silent contempt has been the sole notice
they could excite; consoled, indeed, some of them, by the palpable
favors of Philip. Have then no fears for us, my friend. The grounds
of these exist only in English newspapers, endited or endowed by the
Castlereaghs or the Cannings, or some other such models of pure and
uncorrupted virtue. Their military heroes, by land and sea, may sink our
oyster-boats, rob our hen-roosts, burn our negro-huts, and run off. But
a campaign or two more will relieve them from further trouble or expense
in defending their American possessions.
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