Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

COMMUNICATION.

The theme of gratitude. which the French government and our Jacobins have with so much delicacy reiterated in our ears, might have been passed over with the contempt which a generous spirit forever feels when favors are converted into bonds and fetters, had not the worthy part of the community conceived that what was so very often urged was really founded in truth. It is time the delusion should be removed— it is time that the freemen of America should know the extent of French kindness; because the draft upon our gratitude is upon the independence of the country, and rises and is modified precisely as it suits the necessities of our would-be masters. When through their minister they demand that we should repeal laws, reverse judicial decrees, and annul treaties, and to induce us to do this, tell us a canting story of the gratitude we owe them, and the obligations they have conferred so disinterestedly-in justice to ourselves and our posterity, and impelled by the sense of our real independence, we must and will examine into this claim upon our gratitude-we must look into the account, to see whether what is so insolently demanded of our virtue, is not a pretext played upon our ignorance, or a courtly trick offered to our fears: The late communication from GEORGE WASHINGTON will let the people see.