The New Hampshire Gazette

The True American.-No. VI.

"The pride and independence of nations, like the virtue of a woman, once sold, can never be repurchased."

We have already seen in the that no submission can save, no degradation secure protection. But it may be said " that France will not always be unjust, she will sometimes be faithful to her engagements.-- Let us make one more experiment of her fidelity. To resist her injustice by force is expensive and burdensome. It is much cheaper to buy her friendship by a small pecuniary sacrifice. A few years hence we shall grow stronger, and shall be able to oppose the united force of Europe."

This tame, temporizing policy-- this mean, dastardly calculation of pecuniary interests--this barter and traffic of national honor, at which our ancestors would have blushed, and which they would indignantly have spurned, would be in the end, the most ruinous expedient, and that end would not be even a distant one. If we could shift the burden from our own necks. to those of our posterity, the calculation would not be so very reprehensible. But such a submission would not relieve us a year. If France should make a treaty with us, upon terms apparently equal, it would only be for the purpose of taking breath, of renewing her influence in this country, and of resuming the contest when the game would be her own. To those who hope for better things from the magnanimous Republic, I point out every footstep which she has trodden. Let me see a village of her visitation which is not marked with carnage and desolation--Whatever was fertile she has blasted Whatever was sacred and valuable, she has uprooted ? is there one promise which she has per. formed ? Is there one stipulation not stained by her perfidy -Let us briefly recur to the sombre catalogue of nations, whom she has blighted and cursed by her friendship.

Geneva had the wretchedness to call France her friend. Geneva was a little happy Republic, while France was a proud crumbling despotism.-- At that time Geneva was safe, happy and prosperous--abounding in arts, industry and science. The ambitious neighbours, the monarchs France, were too truly magnanimous to imbrue their hands in the blood, or to stain their laurels with the conquest of so small a victim. ' But the avaricious maw of the terrible Republic, is more insatiate. Nothing is too great for her ambition--nothing too small for her rapacity. Early in the morning of French liberty, those propagators of freedom marched an army, under Gen. Montesquieu, to inoculate this little republic with the malady of Gallic freedom. At that time, Geneva was too proud, and too wise to bend to the yoke ; she was not fully poisoned by French principles-- she had not learned to calculate the. cost and the worth of their liberties-- she made a virtuous and bold struggle. She asked aid of her sincere neighbour, Switzerland, and obtained it. 1200 brave Swiss, and the spirited Genevans, saved that little republic, at that time. France made a treaty, to take breath-she parleyed to gain time. As with the United States of America, she perceived, that she had disclosed the cloven foot too soon ; she accordingly retracted, with apparent candor ; but mark the result.

This perfidious France sacrificed the virtuous Gen. Montequieu, who negotiated that treaty--charged. him with treachery, and made that a pretence for violating a solemn stipulation. Geneva had not sufficient virtue and spirit to continue her noble exertions. Her citizens began to. calculate the cost-they began to feel the burthens of resistance, and what the force, and even the arts and intrigues of their enemies could not effect, was wrought out by their love of gold. Their tradesmen were told, that by uniting with France, there would be more employ, and cheaper living.--Their merchants were persuaded that trade would revive, and capital increase. Their men of letters were flattered with the belief, that they should be employed in the national seminaries of France.--Their ambitious men looked for preferment on a larger theatre.--Their disorganizers and levellers expected plunder and anarchy.--All classes hoped to get rid of burdens, and the expence of defending their independence, and thus Geneva, by her avarice, sunk into a poor, contemptible, degraded, wretched, embarrassed,and oppressed department of France.

If France has been thus fatal to republics ; if she has worn vengeance against free states, has she been less furious, less unprincipled towards monarchies ? Have they been more guarded against her intrigues, or less the dupes of diplomatic skill ? Spain, of al the nations in Europe, had the most reason to dread and to detest the regicide mountebanks of Paris. Their declaration of eternal war against all crowned heads, must have impressed the monarch of Spain with peculiar horror, as the first practical display of their new theory, which had been inflicted on one of his own family, on the head of the house of . Bourbon.-- The nobility of Sp. in could discern no charms in the fate of the emigrant nobility of France; and the clergy of that kingdom could promise them- selves but little advantage from cultivating the friendship of a nation of atheists, who ridiculed their holy religion, as a superstitious mockery who denied the existence of a God, and who had demolished his sanctuaries, as a pretext for seizing upon the accumulated wealth of the Ecclesiastics, and as an apology for plundering the massy furniture of the sacrament table. The people of Spain were the natural enemies of the French nation. Antient and deep-rooted antipathies were interwoven in the national character. With all their prejudices, with all their accumulated causes of bitterness, the war broke out between Spain and this new-fashioned Republic this modern Rome-this intended mistress of the world. . But the same timid, parsimonious policy, palsied and benumbed the exertions of Spain, as had enervated, divided and subjected the republican enemies of France. From the fear of being a province, the monarch of Spain basely surrendered the honor of his crown. For the preservation of our holy religion, he forms an alliance with a nation of atheists, who have sworn to exterminate all religion, and have actually overturned all morality. To save a few of his Mexican dollars, he consents to be tributary to a nation of free-booters, who will be easy so long as he has dollars to bestow, and will then revolutionize his country, bring him to the scaffold-zannihilate his ecclesiastical establishments--subvert the power and property of the nobility-— and finally subject the miserable Spaniards to a military oligarchy:

What has Spain already saved by her ignominious submission ? She has procrastinated her final downfall 2 few years; but she has saved no reputation--for she has disgraced her- self in the eyes of all Europe, and will be despised by posterity. She has rendered her eventual overthrow more inevitable and more easy. She has been spared no expences, for besides being compelled to take an active and expensive part in the war, against her own allies : against her wishes, and against her own principles, she has been obliged to support the whole diplomatic intercourse of France.-Her fleet has been compelled to fight the battles of Republicanism, against royalty, and has been beaten with dishonor. Her commerce has been destroyed, and transferred to neutral nations. who are now reaping the fruits of it.-Her territory is violated daily by the corsairs of France, in despite of the law of nations, and the much boasted honor of Spain.--Her national sovereignty has been usurped by a miserable set of French diplomatic agents, who have assumed the attributes of over- eignty and jurisdiction, almost within the royal palace--and finally, she waits, like the ox in' the shambles. till the republican butcher shall have dispatched the King of Naples, and shall have leisure to apply the knife to his trembling neck.

"DECIUS"