Baylor, open, because
I solicit your perusal of it. It will, at the same time, furnish the
apology for my not answering you from Philadelphia. You ask for any
communication I may be able to make, which may administer comfort to
you. I can give that which is solid. The spirit of 1776 is not dead.
It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is
substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played
on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful
manoeuvres, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging
chains for themselves. But time and truth have dissipated the delusion,
and opened their eyes. They see now that France has sincerely wished
peace, and their seducers have wished war, as well for the loaves and
fishes which arise out of war expenses, as for the chance of changing
the constitution, while the people should have time to contemplate
nothing but the levies of men and money. Pennsylvania, Jersey, and
New York are coming majestically round to the true principles. In
Pennsylvania, thirteen out of twenty-two counties had already petitioned
on the alien and sedition laws. Jersey and New York had begun the same
movement, and though the rising of Congress stops that channel for the
expression of their sentiment, the sentiment is going on rapidly, and
before their next meeting those three States will be solidly embodied
in sentiment with the six southern and western ones.
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