ABSTRACT
YESTERDAY I received your letter, in which you accuse me of describing with too much enthusiasm the public rejoicings in France, and prophesy that I shall return to my own country a fierce republican. In answer to these accusations, I shall only observe, that it is very difficult, with common sensibility, to avoid sympathizing in general happiness. My love of the French revolution, is the natural result of this sympathy, and therefore my political creed is entirely an affair of the heart; for I have not been so absurd as to consult my head upon matters of which it is so incapable of judging. If I were at Rome, you would not be surprized to hear that I had visited, with the warmest reverence, every spot where any relics of her antient grandeur could be traced; that I had flown to the capitol, that I had kissed the earth on which the Roman senate fat in council: And can you then expect me to have seen the Federation at the 41Champ de Mars, and the National Assembly of France, with indifference? Before you insist that I ought to have done so, point out to me, in the page of Roman history, a spectacle more solemn, more affecting, than the Champ de Mars exhibited, or more magnanimous, more noble efforts in the cause of liberty than have been made by the National Assembly. Whether the new form of government, establishing in France, be more or less perfect than our own, “Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?”
