“But to give you an instance.  In the Massachusetts remonstrance they attribute the repeal of the Orders in Council to the kind disposition of the English Government, and a wish on their part to do justice, whereas it is notorious in this country that they repealed them on account of the injury it was doing themselves, and took America into consideration about as much as they did the inhabitants of Kamschatka.  The conditional repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees was a back door for them, and they availed themselves of it to sneak out of it.  This necessity, this act of dire necessity, the Federal papers cry up as evincing a most forbearing spirit towards us, and really astonish the English themselves who never dreamt that it could be twisted in that way.

“Mama assigns as a reason for my thinking well of the English that they have been very polite to me, and that it is ingratitude in me if I do otherwise.  A few individuals have treated me politely, and I do feel thankful and gratified for it; but a little politeness from an individual of one nation to an individual of another is certainly not a reason that the former’s Government should be esteemed incapable of wrong by the latter.  I esteem the English as a nation; I rejoice in their conquests on the Continent, and would love them heartily, if they would let me; but I am afraid to tell them this, they are already too proud.

“Their treatment of America is the worse for it.  They are like a poor man who has got a lottery ticket and draws a great prize, and when his poor neighbor comes sincerely to congratulate him on his success, he holds up his head, and, turning up his nose, tells him that now he is his superior and then kicks him out of doors.

“Papa says he expects peace in six months.  It may be in the disposition of America to make peace, but not in the will of the English.  It is in the power of the Federalists to force her to peace, but they will not do it, so she will force us to do it.”

As in most discussions, political or otherwise, neither party seems to have been convinced by the arguments of the other, for the parents continue to urge him to leave politics alone; indeed, they insist on his doing so.  They also urge him to make every effort to support himself, if he should decide to spend another year abroad, for they fear that they will be unable to send him any more money.  However, the father, when he became convinced that it was really to his son’s interest to spend another year abroad, contrived to send him another thousand dollars.  This was done at the cost of great self-sacrifice on the part of himself and his family, and was all the more praiseworthy on that account.