"As it was impossible to separate the military events

whil

3om the ringles or the

of those events in France -wth the principles that prowe e in the eles princisões Independ., and fo

"As it was impossible to separate the military events which took place in America from the principles of the American revolution, the publication of those events in France necessarily connected themselves with the principles that produced them. Many of the facts were in themselves principles; such as the Declaration of American Independence, and the treaty of alliance between France and America, which recognized the natural rights of man, and justified resistance to oppression."

This is the proper place to show that neither Paine, Rousseau, nor Voltaire are at all chargeable with the abominations which have been perpetrated, both in America and France, in the name of liberty; and that our "scurvy politi cians" have no more business to spout their impudent claptrap in the name of the principles advocated by the author of "The Rights of Man," than Marat, St. Just, and Robespierre, had to mouth Rousseau. Nothing is plainer, than that the two great moving minds in the American and French revolutions aimed at the practical actualization of liberty.

Had Rousseau awoke from the dead at the time of the French Revolution, "What!" he would have exclaimed. "Do you take carnage to be what I meant by the state of nature? "Miscreants!" Paine would thunder in the ears of our rulers, were he now to visit the land over which the starspangled banner waves. "Is elective franchise to end in majority-despotism and spoils? Do you think I meant caucus trickery, election frauds, office gambling, corruption,-in short, demagogism, when I said free government?

66

แ

Are my teachings to be estimated from the stand-point where 'tis difficult, if not impossible to determine whether "free laborers or slaves" have the most uncomfortable time of it? In the name of " Common Sense," I protest against your gross misrepresentation of me. The contemptible knave and fool game which you are playing in the name of liberty, is but the back step of the forward one towards freedom, which I helped mankind to take.

.

Call you your miserable hotch-potch of spent supernaturalism and worn out absolutism, what I meant by freedom? You might as well call a rotting heap of building materials, which some architect, whose skill was far in advance of his time, had not lived long enough to put together according to his design, the edifice which he intended.