Note 6 — Reflexions on a Letter from Philadelphia, inserted in the English News-papers.

One of the most respectable English writers has been charged with having entirely given up the American cause, which he had hitherto so strenuously supported; in my opinion it is a mistake. It was not to the Americans that the Doctor was attached, it was to certain maxims, plain but fertile, by which they seemed to have been directed, and which the said author, establishes and recommends as the only guides for all Princes and Nations, to lead them to that point of prosperity the limits of which can be prescribed by Nature alone; the Americans most probably will return to those maxims, and I presume to think, that they will instantly be restored to the favour of that worthy Divine; my opinions so nearly approach to those of that honest man on every point that truly concerns society, that I wish either to convert him, or to be perverted by him, with regard to the reimbursement. I must confess, that if the ideas which are the ground-work of my principles, be false, the error is mine alone; if I am right, the mistake of the Doctor, (like the imperfections in Shakespeare), is the fault of his age, not of himself. I shall further add, that the reimbursement, according to the principles I have laid down, is not a measure by any means material to the State; it is only a trifling injustice done to very little purpose, and not even suspected by those who sustain it, a je ne sais quoi giving to one a little credit and a little uneasiness to others, keeping the bulls and bears in spirits and the writers of paragraphs in full employ, but luckily productive of a light and transitory sensation only, and even that in a small part of the machine: so little is reimbursed at a time! so soon is one tired of reimbursing! Presently, the only essential object, the price of every thing shapes itself so well by the circumstances attending the reimbursement, that I should not hesitate to ascribe the ordinary, the infallible reparation of all evil, to the credit of one sole principle of all good, were it not my invariable maxim (as it is the Doctor’s and his friend M. Turgot’s) not to scandalise even those who do not believe in God.

There is a prejudice much more unaccountable in England, in the proud England, than the whim of a national reimbursement; it is that prejudice which all the hired writers, pro and con, endeavour to propagate from age to age in all countries, a prejudice, on the destroying of which every unhired writer can never be too intent, that prejudice stating, that the prosperity of a State depends on one single individual. Where is that Phœnix to be found? There are always two pretenders at least, who cry at once, I am the man, and a thousand voices exclaiming together, he is the man. The prosperity of a State, be its extent what it may, solely depends on its agriculture, its industry, its knowledge, and on that degree of liberty with which those three objects can exert themselves in every way. This is the grand truth which ought to be impressed on every mind.⸺Let one great man die in a country where great men are appreciated⸺stamp on the ground, and ten such men will start up: many more will start up when every body, without respect either to face or mask, is at liberty to stand as a candidate.