increase the future security for the liberty, and independence, and happiness of their subjects.

WE take occasion to declare, however, that we are not desirous to see the American separate state powers attacked. As they are, let them remain, till experience suggests changes, and the people are freely willing to make them. We do not pretend, however, that a discerning patriot ought not to apprehend the ambitious abuse, that faction is trying to make of the powers of the great states, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and of the disturbance, foreign influence, and consequent weakness of the national force. This point is of late much better understood in New-England.

PHOCION. N°. I.

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE PALLADIUM, APRIL, 1801.

BRITISH INFLUENCE.

BRITISH influence is a phrase commonly enough used by

the jacobins without any meaning, or without any that is precise. They hate the federalists, and they have some unknown and incommunicable reasons for it, which are at once conveyed, without being defined, by charging them with acting under British influence..

CORRECT in uirers will, however, ask for definitions. Influence, then let it be said, is political power, and is exerted to modify or control, or prevent the publick measures of the American nation. It may be the private opinion of a few scholars, that the English government is excellent in its principles, and favourable to that sort of healthful, long-lived liberty, that grows hardy by braving labours, and perils, and storms, and that it will probably survive, and be in its youth, twenty ages after the ephemeral despotisms of France are lost in oblivion. These individual opinions, if they are erroneous, or extravagant, or obnoxious to popular prejudices, are not of a sort to influence the publick measures of this country. They never have done it; they have never been popular opinions, and of course have never had political influence. Nor is it material, that some persons still respect England as the land of our father's sepulchres.

THEY may think, that the early principles and institutions, in which the first settlers of New-England were educated in England, and which they brought over and planted here, entitle that nation to our respectful remembrance. If even the English character should impress some respect, as being sincere, generous, and benevolent, if their magnanimous spirit in war, their strict and impartial administration of justice, their enter

prise in commerce, their ingenuity in the arts, and the renown of their poets, statesmen, and philosophers, should, in the eyes of some admirers, throw a lustre over the British name, yet, let it be remembered, those admirers are not numerous. They dare not avow, that such are their sentiments. No, though we sprung from English parents, the only language that can be used, without the risk of persecution, is that of rage, abhorrence, and contempt. At the hazard of disgracing our own pedigree, we are summoned, six times a week, in the jacobin gazettes, to treat the British subjects as the slaves of a tyrant, whose spirit is as wretched as their lot. The publick opinion is certainly not that of attachment to England; and it is the prevailing popular sentiment only that can influence the measures of our government.

IF Britain then has influence, or, in other words, political power, it must be exerted in some other way, and by some other instruments than such as we have mentioned.

THE base will say, and the base will believe, that Britain has gold enough to buy friends and to carry a vote in congress as often as her interests require the expense. A charge of this nature seldom needs proof, or is much shaken by confutation. The base will believe it without proof. They will consider congress as a market, where virtue is for sale, and, if they look into their own hearts, they will find nothing there to discredit the evidence of such a traffick, or to enhance the terms of the bargain. Integrity and honour are sounding words, and they, who would pay a price according to the sound, are welcome to the substance. They consider all virtue as a thing not wanted for their own use, but as a false jewel, to be disposed of to the best customers. Of all men I have ever known, the jacobins have the worst opinion of human nature. An honest discharge of duty in any station, is a thing incredible, because with them it is incomprehensible. Accordingly, they begin with accusations and calumnies of the foulest sort, and call upon us to shew that they are not true; as if the burden of proof did not rest on the accusers, but the accused.

AFTER having charged Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Pickering, Wolcott, and others, with being British partizans, they assume the charge as a sentence judicially pronounced and established, and affect to consider all solicitude to repel it as an indication of a consciousness of guilt: the galled jade winces, they will say. But even this burden of proof, however unfairly imposed, may be fearlessly assumed by the friends of the federal administration of our government.

It is proper to remark to the men who are observers of human nature, that of all kinds of influence the first for igno rant and vulgar minds to suspect, is downright bribery and corruption; it is, nevertheless, the last for even the profligate and shameless to yield to. It is so coarse an instrument, that it seldom answers the purpose. There are instances, and one is said to have happened during our revolution, where a man, who wanted integrity, made an outcry, when he had it in his power to brag that it had been tempted. More than half the indictments for rapes, are founded on the charges of women of no virtue. There is so much shame in yielding to the offer of a bribe, and so much glory in refusing it, that the latter is often the better and more tempting bribe, which determines the conduct.

SIR Robert Walpole, the celebrated English minister, is said to have been a master in the art of corruption; but when publick opinion was decided strongly for or against a measure, as in the cases of the excise, the Jew bill, if I mistake not, and the cruelties of the Spanish guarda-costas, his gold and his art failed to secure a majority in parliament. In the late attempt to unite Great Britain and Ireland, the project, in spite of ministerial influence, was at first rejected by the Irish commons. The publick reasons were strong, the publick good plainly called for the union; yet passion and prejudice opposed the measure. Ireland, by the union, seemed to be lost and swallowed up; and this secret dread, this inward horrour, of sinking into nothing, outweighed all the forcible national arguments in favour of the measure. It may be added, that the members felt a like decline of their own weight and influence.

It may, therefore, be said, with sir Robert Walpole, that it is hard to bribe members even to do their duty, and to vote according to their consciences: much less can they be bribed to vote against them, or rather against the known voice of the nation.

ALL experience shews, that to get a bad measure adopted, when it is popular, is easy; to get a good one is ever hard, against the current of even the most absurd and groundless popular clamour. The side, therefore, to look for corrupt influence is ever the popular side, because that is the unsuspected, and yet the dark side: members, in that case, can be praised for acting against duty. As many are willing to yield their principles, who cannot part with their reputation, the occasions are frequent, when members prefer acting so as to please the people instead of serving them.

THE current of popularity has ever been anti-British, it has ever been dangerously French. From hence it follows, that bribes could not have been employed without great difficulty, nor with much effect on the British side, nor without a great deal of effect on the French side: there was a general willingness to be deceived in regard to France. Mr. Monroe's unexampled assurances, that Americans would submit to captures, and rejoice in their losses, if it would serve the republick, and Mr. Gerry's unaccountable, and yet unexplained lingering in Paris, are proofs how deep-rooted and general the prejudice is in favour of the French.

Ir will be asked, also, if bribes were given by England, who was bribed? Washington ratified the treaty; was he bribed? Was the senate and a majority of the house of representatives? If that is true, or only suspected, the democrats, who suspect it, ought to go to France to enjoy "the pure morals of the republick," instead of living in a country so corrupt, and, as Fauchet said, so early decrepid.

It is confessed, these are observations which tarnish a newspaper: they dishonour America, and yet the files of the democratick gazettes repeat their audacious slanders of British influence, in a style to extort a careful and circumstantial