pretty nearly resemble us. It is believed to be hard for two beauties to be friends. Our pride is never hurt by our being compared with those who are very unlike us, and even if the superiority is assigned to the other party, the decision is rendered inoffensive by the manifest dissimilarity of the subjects of the comparison. In like manner, we know that Americans resemble Frenchmen so little, that there is no ground for invidious comparison; but Englishmen we are like, and the painful question to national pride is, which nation is superiour. Partial as we are and ought to be to the American nation, we cannot despise the English nation, we will not prefer them, all that is left is to hate them. I ask with emphasis, is not this done? Is not the pride of Great Britain the theme of popular irritation? Is not their power held up as a bug-bear? Is not this fear an instrument to work upon the passions of our citizens? and which of our demagogues could hold his authority without using it? We are too much like the English to love them, because we love ourselves better, and we hate all comparisons that mortify our self-love.

THE fact is, the hatred of England is excessive, and, as popular passions are the agents of our political good or evil, exposes our government to the extreme hazard of confusion and French fraternity, and our peace to the shock of a British war.

PHOCION. No. V.

British Influence.

FOREIGN influence has been traced with some attention to the impediments and auxiliaries of its operation, within our country. It remains to look without it, and to consider the political situation of France and England, and to determine, which of the two will be disposed and invited to employ her influence in the control of our affairs.

THE Counsels of both will be guided by their views of political good and evil. It is not believed, that France, insolent with victory, and crimson with revolutionary crimes, will regard

either shame or principle. It is not believed, that England will wholly disregard the maxims and rules of civilized states. But without really admitting, that France is on a footing in point of morals or deference to the laws of nations, even with Algiers, it shall, for argument sake, be conceded to those who love her better than America, that France and England will exactly alike pursue what their interest dictates. Be it so.

ENGLAND then is commercial. Her commerce thrives by the immense superiority of her skill, industry, and capital. She has capital enough to employ and to trust. Her interest, as a trading nation, is to have good customers: her interest is, that those who owe should pay. But the essence, and almost the quintessence, of a good government is, to protect property and its rights. When these are protected, there is scarcely any booty left for oppression to seize; the objects and the motives to usurpation and tyranny are removed. By securing property, life and liberty can scarcely fail of being secured: where property is safe by rules and principles, there is liberty. It is precisely such a government that Great Britain wishes to find and to sustain, wherever her commerce and credit extend. She is, of course, so far as her commercial interest extends, the friend of all governments that are friends to justice and protectors of honest creditors. Where justice ceases, there her credit stops. Stable governments, and especially such as have a portion of liberty to give them enterprise and to make them large consumers, are her best customers. If Turkey in Europe had as much law and liberty as the United States, it would demand, perhaps, as much manufactures as Britain could supply. Britain is obviously and demonstrably interested, not in the overthrow, but in the support of the regular governments in existence, no matter whether monarchies or republicks. Governments that will compel debtors to be just, are all, in their form and administration, that British influence, in this point of view, could be employed to make them. Accordingly, we do not find, that the trade of England with Holland was ever disturbed, because the latter was a republick, and for half a century destitute even of a stadtholder; we do not find,

that Englishmen were set at work to preach democracy in Cadiz, though surely English liberty is as unlike Spanish despotism as our republicanism. No, she was well content to clothe the colonists of Spain, and to receive their gold, silver, and diamonds, without stirring up a faction in Lisbon or Madrid to call first town meetings and then parliaments. Experience has fully shewn, that commerce, with democratick and aristocratick republicks, with monarchies and simple despotisms, has been alike cherished and prosecuted for ages, without a suspicion, and certainly without an attempt on the part of Great Britain to revolutionize their governments. It is not difficult to shew, that stable liberty is the best condition of nations for the advancement of her commercial interest; yet no attempt is recollected even to introduce this blessing insidiously among her customers. The subjects of despots consume little and pay less: the diffusion of true and stable liberty would augment her commerce and manufactures.

It must be urged also, that the genuine liberty of Englishmen is unfavourable to the fanatical spirit of conquest. Every able-bodied man at the plough or in the workshops of Birmingham and Sheffield, is worth scarcely less than one hundred guineas. A free nation will be prosperous, and a prosperous nation cannot employ a man as a soldier without diverting his industry from husbandry or the arts. It costs too much for free thriving nations to be soldiers: the military spirit is no more to be indulged, than a taste for luxuries by the poor, because the objects of gratification are, in both cases, equally out of reach. Rich states can poorly afford to wear armour : the sword is the dearest of all tools. The ragged peasantry of France, half employed, less than half paid, were ever ready to listen to the enchanting eloquence of a recruiting sergeant. War has ever been in France the trade first in credit and least of all in rivalship with any other.

BRITAIN, with a moderate population, has, therefore, never been in a condition to indulge the spirit of conquest. Territorial aggrandizement has, indeed, been her object in Bengal and the peninsula of India; but it was there in subservience

to her commerce; and, let it be remarked, that the unwarlike Gentoos offered little resistance to her arms: she employed but a handful of Europeans to subject empires to the India company. This seeming exception from the observation before made is, nevertheless, a strong illustration of its truth: she contended for territory for the sake of her commerce, and great as the prize was, the means she could employ were feeble.

It may be said, therefore, on the ground of experience, that the territorial ambition of Great Britain is limited and checked by her situation, character, and means; her insular situation, her commercial character, and her pecuniary means. Being an island, she cannot annex provinces to her empire; being commercial, she aims rather at profit than power; and being prosperous and industrious, her citizens are too dear to be hired as soldiers. Britain cannot raise great land armies, and, therefore, she cannot be so mad as to effect conquests that would require them. Admitting that the United States would submit a little sourly to her government, it would take forty or fifty thousand men in camps and garrisons, to keep any shew of authority over America; and on the first symptoms of resistance they must be doubled. Great Britain, as she is, is not rich enough to afford to accept of the sixteen states as provinces. If a spirit, as restless and turbulent as Pennsylvania has shewn, should accompany and succeed our submission, we should certainly drain her treasury, and finally baffle her arms.

GREAT BRITAIN pursues a policy of more moderation, justice, and wisdom. Her naval superiority is employed to extend her commerce: if she carries her sword in one hand, it is to offer her commodities with the other. Her ships of war cannot conquer extensive territories, nor preserve them in subjection. Thus the means she possesses, and those she wants, almost equally exclude her from territorial power. Perhaps the increase of her soldiers would necessarily exhaust the funds for the support of her ships, and, therefore, we are certain that

she will not ordinarily attempt impossibilities; she will not try to gain the possession of territory that she could not keep.

THE application of these remarks is easy. We conceive that Britain has no motive, nor has she means to disturb the government of the United States, by attempting to excite the popular passions to control its measures. She cannot have influence, because those passions will for ever run counter to her wishes: those wishes, conformable to her interests, will be to support the government, that the goverment may support justice. The very nature of her power ensures an irreconcilable hostility with popular feeling in the United States. She is commercial, and so are we. Excluded from some of her ports in our own ships, rivals and competitors in all marts, inferiour in all seas, and made especially in time of war sensible by her arrogance and injustice, painfully sensible of our inferiority, we shall hate her power, and suspect her influence, when she has none, when she cannot have any, and when the hatred gives influence to her rival, France.

PHOCION. No. VI.

French Influence.

FRENCH influence has found, and will long find, both motives and means to disturb and control the measures of any honest and truly national government in America.

SINCE Rome, no state has ever manifested such exorbitant ambition as France. Whether this arises from the nature of her power, which has ever been military, or the extent of it, which, for two centuries, has proved an overmatch for any European state; whether two centuries spent in efforts for aggrandizement have formed martial habits, or whether the national character be the cause rather than the effect of those struggles, the fact is certain, that France is of all modern states the most military, intriguing, and ambitious. Since the revolution, all traces of every other passion have disappeared, and the sword is the only utensil to occupy industry or to carve