Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

From the Columbian Centinel.

Political truths worthy attentive perusal.

Mr. Russell,

Among the causes which operate at this crisis of agitation throughout the civilized world, none possesses or has displayed a more formidable energy to subvert civil government and social order, than that spirit of political fanaticism which has given to the French revolution, half its character and almost all its terrors. Of all evil spirits, it is perhaps the most intolerant, sanguinary and blind. It boasts of its liberality, because it abhors the power of priests and tyrants; and indeed, all despotism but its own. It never ceases to extol its philanthropy and fraternity, and its merit in asserting for men his imprescriptible rights, and as the best of them, his freedom of speech and thought, yet neither the ten persecutions of Christians, nor the records of the inquisition, furnish so long a list of victims for opinion's sake as three years of the French revolution. These observations will afford the proof that is not wanted of the intolerance and ferocity of the political reformers. Their blindness no less remarkable; since in spite of experience, which has written its lessons of refutation in blood, they labour still to make proselytes to their anarchical theories, although they see the fabric of society shaken or subverted and the earth strewed with ruins on the actual experiment of them.

One cannot look back upon the last six years without wondering at the number and the bewitching or rather maddening nature of the impostures which have been addressed to the credulity of mankind. Europe was to be bound in cords of love, and the nations were to learn war no more; governments were to be the works and the image of the people: Thus they would exhibit in their administration the purity and divinity of their origin, and the awful sanctity of their destination and duties:—the people restored to their lost rights, and asserting and sustaining their native dignity, were to rise much higher than ever Adam fell; and all France, indeed all the world, was

To quit its sphere and run into the skies.

Philosophers, the champions of these rights the artificers of this splendid machinery have wielded the republican sceptre, and have brought their principles to the test & disgraced them; for which of their flattering dreams has not fled, which of their metaphysical systems assuming just principles and carrying them to excess, has not been tried and failed, and failed so completely as to cover the agents with guilt and ruin, and their admirers with confusion?

But the sect of political fanatics, rising like Antaeus the stronger from the fall, are never more formidable than when just defeated. To suffer confutation and disgrace like suffering persecution, consolidates the party, sublimes the ardor of its zeal and gives to the unity and energy of its action a power like Samson's to shake the pillars of every government. with a giant's force—

Though in France a man has no rights, except such as he holds at sufferance, because the despots may not for the moment have an interest to invade them; though it may be put to vote that his estate, real and personal, belongs to the treasury, and that he thus beggared, shall be sent to live with the less ravenous Alligators of the Orinoco, and he goes, yet the words liberty, equality and the rights of Man remain.—Yes, they remain not only for mockery at home, but as engines of seduction and destruction in every other country. These wonder working words, more forceful than Buonaparte's cannon, have annihilated the Dutch and Spaniards—they exist in name, but the vital soul of independence is dead within them Italy is more changed and more desolated than of old by Attila. Fanaticism crosses the Adriatic and carries to Dalmatia and to the Albanians, that impatience under government which requires more than former restraint, and yet will not submit to any. It every where enacts that men who will not be governed by reason shall not be governed by force; that it is the most debasing extreme of despotism to exact our social or political duties by force, and yet the brightest of all civic virtues to assert our rights by violence; that governments are the proper objects of hatred and of hostility, because they are in their very nature odious, and it is owing to them that the nations are corrupted as well as enslaved. The credulity, the ignorance and the ferocity of the people are imputed to kings, nobles and priests. The general good being the end, and the general will the source of authority, the people may discern and they have a good right to mistake the tendency of measures, they may for any cause, or no cause at all, create or change their political systems.

This, it is insisted, a nation, whom ages of despotism had debased, blinded and corrupted, is competent to do with infallible rectitude and wisdom, as soon as the dread of despotic power is converted into fury against those who held it. The tame beasts under the monarchy are wild ones now. Slaves who slept in chains awake maniacs, and may, they tell us, be tied with ribbons—they scatter firebrands, they pillage and kill—no matter—the declaration of rights is printed on their snuff-boxes—the goddess of reason sits in the church of Notre Dame, and the shouts of millions are heard at the feast of confederation and the holy anniversary of the murders of the 10th of August.

Absurdities of this description are called philosophy, and therefore disdain argument and instruction. It is then arrogant pretension to instruct mankind. In such extremes they are miracles, and are allowed to attest themselves. Thus Buonaparte goes forward in land through Italy to persuade the people to accept their liberty, and to be as independent as the Dutch, but for this precious gift they must pay their protectors until they are satisfied.