National Gazette

Extract of a letter from Chester county August 17.

"I do by no means hold your project to be either weak or chimeric of introducing the French language into general use in this country, and thereby supplanting the English. The purposes to be answered by such a change are great and desirable; particularly, it would put us in a fair way of ridding ourselves of numberless prejudices now, and for a long time past, imbibed from the literary productions of a nation which in some sort got in the underlinings of Americans, and lead many of them to suppose, that nothing excellent ever did or can exist out of England, and that the best way of rendering ourselves acceptable to God, is to murder and destroy our fellow men. No time can be preferable to the present for setting about this great work, the country being in a manner full of French people, the far greater part of whom mean to settle in the states, and become American citizens, so that in every village, and almost on every farm, the inhabitants will have an opportunity of becoming practically acquainted with this elegant language. Let no one despair at difficulties in their first attempts: Doctor Franklin learned to speak the French fluently after he had passed his seventieth year. I am told the most of our federal executive speak it; by their setting the example, and allowing no other to be used in their families, the people at large would soon come into the general use of it, and the next age would see the French tongue the vernacular idiom of this country."