I shall, therefore, confine my explanations to what I have
said about Billy Pitt and the French.
The youth of this day may deem it suspicious that an Episcopal
divine--_Protestant_ Episcopal, I mean; but it is so hard to get
the use of new terms as applied to old thoughts, in the decline of
life!--may deem it suspicious that a Protestant Episcopal divine
should care anything about Billy Pitt, or execrate Infidel France; I
will, therefore, just intimate that, in 1802, no portion of the
country dipped more deeply into similar sentiments than the
descendants of those who first put foot on the rock of Plymouth, and
whose progenitors had just before paid a visit to Geneva, where, it is
"said or sung," they had found a "church without a bishop, and a state
without a king." In a word, admiration of Mr. Pitt, and execration of
Bonaparte, were by no means such novelties in America, in that day, as
to excite wonder. For myself, however, I can truly say, that, like
most Americans who went abroad in those stirring times, I was ready to
say with Mercutio, "a plague on both your houses;" for neither was
even moderately honest, or even decently respectful to ourselves.
Party feeling, however, the most inexorable, and the most
unprincipled, of all tyrants, and the bane of American liberty,
notwithstanding all our boasting, decreed otherwise; and, while one
half the American republic was shouting hosannas to the Great
Corsican, the other half was ready to hail Pitt as the "Heaven-born
Minister.
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