As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain
in this contest, so long they were treated as the most abandoned
tyrants, and, indeed, the basest of the human race. The moment any of
them quits the cause of this government, and of all governments, he is
rehabilitated, his honor is restored, all attainders are purged. The
friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common
cause are no longer traitors.
That you may not doubt that they look on this war as a civil war, and
the Jacobins of France as of their party, and that they look upon us,
though locally their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have never
failed to run a parallel between our late civil war and this war with
the Jacobins of France. They justify their partiality to those Jacobins
by the partiality which was shown by several here to the Colonies, and
they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some
of our propositions for peace with the English in America.
This I do not mention as entering into the controversy how far they are
right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and
that they do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins of
France.
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