Alexandria Daily Advertiser

The Jacobin editors, from one end of the country to the other, have openly declared the present government of France a despotism, and its ruler a tyrant, which every republican paper has styled a despot. In this, they only subscribed to the sentiment only labored for years to inculcate, and to impress strongly on the public mind.

The Jacobins, however, now proclaim it as a discovery of their own, and as a truth just promulgated to the world. Every one in America, except those who have been imported since that time, knows that, at the commencement of the French revolution, almost every republican in this country was a well-wisher to what was then supposed to be the cause of freedom in France. Soon, however, very soon, after the commencement of that revolution, all sensible men clearly perceived, that its necessary tendency was to a despotism more complete than France had ever experienced: and all honest men, except they were duped and deluded, joined with one voice in deprecating the nefarious conduct of that nation. The republicans of the U. States were free and prompt to declare, that all liberty was rooted out from France, and, that however furiously the Jacobins might talk of the glorious achievements of our dear sister republic, the whole was a farce, and the people of France would at last find themselves in a state of miserable bondage. Such was the language of republican editors.

On the other hand, the democrats charged those who held this language, with monarchical principles, with hostility to the rights of man, and with being the prostituted hirelings of the British government. While extolling to the heavens the successive tyrants of France, from Marat to Bonaparte, they filled the ears of the vulgar with the most wicked and scurrilous abuse of those who were striving to prevent the like outrages in our own Country. Not more than three years have intervened, as the files of every Jacobin paper in the union will testify, since Bonaparte was made the subject of the most extravagant applause, and the most indecent and fulsome toasts, at a time too when he was ravaging Europe and Asia with fire and sword, and our rulers were calumniated and insulted for not joining in the folly. What ought the American people to think of the understanding and integrity of those men, who could applaud every step which was taken to plunge France into the despotism in which she is now engulfed, and at last cry out, that Bonaparte is a tyrant, and France is in chains!

G. U. S.