LETTER CCXI.--TO GENERAL GATES, May 30,1797
TO GENERAL GATES.
Philadelphia, May 30,1797.
Dear General,
I thank you for the pamphlet of Erskine enclosed in your favor of the
9th instant, and still more for the evidence which your letter affords
me of the health of your mind, and I hope of your body also. Erskine has
been reprinted here, and has done good. It has refreshed the memory
of those who had been willing to forget how the war between France
and England had been produced; and who, aping St. James's, called it a
defensive war on the part of England. I wish any events could induce
us to cease to copy such a model, and to assume the dignity of being
original. They had their paper system, stockjobbing, speculations,
public debt, monied interest, &c, and all this was contrived for us.
They raised their cry against jacobinism and revolutionists, we against
democratic societies and anti-federalists; their alarmists sounded
insurrection, ours marched an army to look for one, but they could
not find it. I wish the parallel may stop here, and that we may avoid,
instead of imitating, a general bankruptcy and disastrous war.
Congress, or rather the Representatives, have been a fortnight debating
between a more or less irritating answer to the President's speech.
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