ar as
the French government. Art and industry combined, have certainly wrought
out of this business a wonderful effect on the people. Yet they have
been astonished more than they have understood it, and now that Gerry's
correspondence comes out, clearing the French government of that
turpitude, and showing them 'sincere in their dispositions for peace,
not wishing us to break the British treaty, and willing to arrange a
liberal one with us,' the people will be disposed to suspect they have
been duped. But these communications are too voluminous for them, and
beyond their reach. A recapitulation is now wanting of the whole story,
stating every thing according to what we may now suppose to have been
the truth, short, simple, and levelled to every capacity. Nobody in
America can do it so well as yourself, in the same character of the
father of your country, or any form you like better, and so concise, as,
omitting nothing material, may yet be printed in handbills, of which
we could print and disperse ten or twelve thousand copies under letter
covers, through all the United States, by the members of Congress when
they return home. If the understanding of the people could be rallied
to the truth on this subject, by exposing the dupery practised on them,
there are so many other things about to bear on them favorably for
the resurrection of their republican spirit, that a reduction of the
administration to constitutional principles cannot fail to be the
effect. These are the alien and sedition laws, the vexations of the
stamp-act, the disgusting particularities of the direct tax, the
additional army without an enemy, and recruiting officers lounging at
every Court-House to decoy the laborer from his plough, a navy of fifty
ships, five millions to be raised to build it, on the usurious interest
of eight per cent., the perseverance in war on our part, when the French
government shows such an anxious desire to keep at peace with us, taxes
often millions now paid by four millions of people, and yet a necessity,
in a year or two, of raising five millions more for annual expenses.
These things will immediately be bearing on the public mind, and if it
remain not still blinded by a supposed necessity, for the purposes of
maintaining our independence and defending our country, they will set
things to rights. I hope you will undertake this statement. If any body
else had possessed your happy talent for this kind of recapitulation,
I woul