Rhode Island Republican

From the American Citizen.

We this day re-publish what is termed Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mazzei. We beg the reader to guard himself, if possible, against fainting when he peruses it! It is that terrible production which has so long appeared in the federal papers as a bag-a-boe, and inserted, "Letter to Mazzei! Letter to Mazzei! Letter to Mazzei!" It is ascribed to Mr. Jefferson. We know not whether it is the production of his pen or not. But from the energy of thought which it exhibits, the solemn truths it contains, the elegance of its composition, and the genuine patriotism it so warmly breathes, we are inclined to think it the production of our Executive.

"Our political situation is prodigiously changed since you left us--instead of that noble love of liberty, and that republican government which carried us triumphantly through the dangers of the war, an Anglo-monarchic aristocracy has arisen. Their avowed object is to impose on us the substance, as they have already given us the form, of the British government; nevertheless, the principal body of our citizens remain faithful to republican principles. All the proprietors of lands are friendly to those principles, as also the mass of men of talents--we have against us the executive power, all the officers of government, all who are seeking offices, and all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty; the British merchants, and Americans who trade on British capitals, the speculators, persons interested in the bank and public funds.

"I could give you a lever if I should name the apostates who have embraced those heresies--men who were Solomons in council and Samsons in combat, but whose hair has been cut off by the whore, England.

"They would wrest from us that liberty which we have obtained by so much labor and peril, but we shall preserve it. Our mass of wealth and riches is so powerful, that we have nothing to fear from any attempt against us by force--it is sufficient that we guard ourselves, and that we break the Lilliputian ties by which they have bound us, in the heyday of ignorance which succeeded our labors: it suffices that we arrest the progress of that system of ingratitude and injustice towards France, from whom they would alienate us to bring us under British influence."