Alexandria gazette & daily advertiser. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1817-1822, 1818-08-17
ALEX ANnPIA:
MONDAY MORNLNG. .qUGLST II

and rash enough to shape their opinions of
the people Of the United States by the sam
Piles held forth to them in our public prints.
they must soon entertain very humiliating
conception of our moral and political cha
racter. The friends Of freedom in parti-
cular. who are more thickly SET in that
quarter of the world than our liberty brawl-
ers by trade, or the knaves who employ
them, or the tools who are duped by them,
would have us TO believe, will regard with
establishment and concern the departure,
they will naturally enough conclude us to
be guilty of, from all the salutary Prin-
ciples for which our early course obtained
US credit; and they will be the more disap-
pointed. and astonished, because they had
confidently held up the United States as an
evidence Of the truth of their arguments, in
opposition TO those, who by differences de-
duced from the errors and abuses OF The an
Gent democracies, and above all by those
drawn from The mischievous effects of de-
mocracy in France, have long maintained
tha, republics are vicious, and fraught with
the most pernicious effects to society-per-
nicious to national Observation-Disclosures
of social security and happiness, and conta-
mnating to public and private morality.
The enemies of republicanism will now re-
mind them of the sanguinc hopes entertain
ed, and bold promises made on behalf Of
that species of government, as it was then
in process experimental, and would soon
be established, by proof practical in the
new world. When we insisted, (they
will say that as republic America would
be ambitious, turbulent, rapacious and I'M
just TO other nations, as republics ever have
been--that at home il would be individually
intolerant, tyrannical, selfish and morose
(that is TO say that those would be the feel
ings and habits of the majority of the indi-
viduals who should compose it, or in other
words be the TON and fashion of the popu-
lation) that mutual love and mutual be-
nevolence, and all those refined sentiments
which distinguish man from brutes, in an
ascending scale of melioration-the more
noble from the gross, and by insensible
gradations towards state of spirituaiized
excellence, at length elevates men to a
condition next 10 angels, would he extin-
guished in swinish indulgence OF the
worst human in6rmities-that dishonesty,
not concealed, but open, bold, boastfuI,
and proud Of its deformity, would arise out
Of that indulgence-that, as usual, war
would follow, and an unappeasable itch for
war, as the instrument OF wrong, become
the appetite of the more active and enter
prising OF our population, TO the ruin of do
mestic morals, the disturbance of the laws
OF vicinage, and the misery and annoyance
OF foreign nations; you still said that we
we're mistaken, that we were preudiced,
that we saw every thing belonging to the
subject with jaundiced eye--and that the
constant vigilance and jealous superintend-
ence OF the people, rendered effective in
its operation by the powerful agency OF
that all powerful instrument pure and
free press, would render ambition impotent,
throw violation of national rights entirely
out Of their system, and give that republic
for ages TO the undisturbed enjoyment of
peace--and in short, that it would be the
opening Of new and short road to the
now look to the public
journals of that republic and be convinced
OF your fond and foolish error.
" Behold a nation to the government Of
which tyranny is unknown, and which yet
is subject TO the scourges of thousands of
mean and unprincpled tyrants, the bottom
dregs Of society!-Behold press intended
by the benefcent authors of that indepen-
dence theirs, (the establishment Of which
had DUR heartfelt prayers and good wisbes) !
perverted into mighty engine of faction
a battering ram for the demolition of peace
and order-a Pasquin's nutiIated image,
where every filthy lampoon, every malig-
nant libel is stuck up for the amusement of
the rabble--where the rights of the citizen
are trampled under foot, the feelings of
innocent and even unohendiug innocence |
are sacrificed 10 personal venom or polit-
cal fraud-where even the most virtuous
actions Of a virtuous and magnanimous GO
are traduced and endeavored TO |
be tbwarted and contravened, national rob-