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“An Old French Soldier” (Philadelphia) General Advertiser 27 August 1793 - Lance Banning, Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle [1787]

Edition used:

Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle, ed. and with a Preface by Lance Banning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


“An Old French Soldier” (Philadelphia) General Advertiser 27 August 1793

The period so earnestly wished for by your enemies and by ours is at length at hand. Who would have thought, when the blood of Frenchmen drenched the foundation of the temple of your liberty, that a day would come when the interests of your former tyrants and those of your allies should be weighed in the same balance, and that those of the first should preponderate? Who … would have imagined that efforts tending to break off the bonds that unite us would ever have obtained the approbation of the American people? I surely had no thoughts of this kind when, at Yorktown, I saw a whole army of your tyrants render homage to your rights to independence and bend under the united standards of America and France. Let those brave soldiers who witnessed that memorable day, let your illustrious general whose labors it crowned with victory, ask themselves, and let them tell me, whether a Frenchman will not ever be to them as a brother and a friend? Whether our interests, our perils, and our glory can be indifferent to them?

Who, then, has been able to effect the sudden change I am so unfortunate as to witness? Do you, also, wish to punish us for being free; and generous Americans, if it is a crime, recollect that you set the example. What; because we are free, rights are disputed which would have been acknowledged if the tyrant were yet alive; because we are free our friendship is disregarded when the good will of our last master was courted with so much care and attention. It is because we are free that our advances are despised and that advantages which were solicited so earnestly of our former government are now, when granted, disregarded—Americans: the whole world, posterity will judge you. What can you answer? Your public prints overflow with learned discussions. All the rubbish of low writers is brought forward, authorities are scraped up, all to prove to you that ingratitude is a virtue in certain cases. But do you not feel something within you that spurns at such a decline? My friends! the honest and upright man has no need to consult voluminous works to determine what is right; his heart and his conscience are sufficient guides. What is right cannot cease to be so, and virtue is out of the reach of elaborate calculations.

I am not deep in political knowledge, but I have been forcibly impressed with this truth—that the present war in Europe is a war of principle; it is a war between liberty and despotism. Your situation does not permit you to take a part in this war; well, then, we will fight alone in the common cause; but at least give us the consolation to see that on every occasion your wishes are with us, as you have sworn it. Let your own interest prevent your throwing yourselves in the arms of your bitterest enemies.—Do not furnish them with weapons against you by abandoning your only friends.