Does her rejection of the British propositions in 1778, before she knew of any alliance with France, correspond with the Abbe’s description of her mind?  Does a single instance of her conduct since that time justify it?—­But there is a still better evidence to apply to, which is, that of all the mails which at different times have been way-laid on the road, in divers parts of America, and taken and carried into New-York, and from which the most secret and confidential private letters, as well as those from authority, have been published, not one of them, I repeat it, not a single one of them, gives countenance to such a charge.

This is not a country where men are under government restraint in speaking; and if there is any kind of restraint, it arises from a fear of popular resentment.  Now, if nothing in her private or public correspondence favours such a suggestion, and if the general disposition of the country is such as to make it unsafe for a man to shew an appearance of joy at any disaster to her ally; on what grounds, I ask, can the accusation stand?  What company the Abbe may have kept in France, we cannot know; but this we know, that the account he gives does not apply to America.

Had the Abbe been in America at the time the news arrived of the disaster of the fleet under Count de Grasse, in the West-Indies, he would have seen his vast mistake.  Neither do I remember any instance, except the loss of Charlestown, in which the public mind suffered more severe and pungent concern, or underwent more agitations of hope and apprehension, as to the truth or falsehood of the report.  Had the loss been all our own, it could not have had a deeper effect; yet it was not one of those cases which reached to the independence of America.

In the geographical account which the Abbe gives of the Thirteen States, he is so exceedingly erroneous, that to attempt a particular refutation, would exceed the limits I have prescribed to myself.  And as it is a matter neither political, historical, nor sentimental, and which can always be contradicted by the extent and natural circumstances of the country, I shall pass it over; with this additional remark, that I never yet saw an European description of America that was true, neither can any person gain a just idea of it, but by coming to it.

Though I have already extended this letter beyond what I at first proposed, I am, nevertheless, obliged to omit many observations I originally designed to have made.  I wish there had been no occasion for making any.  But the wrong ideas which the Abbe’s work had a tendency to excite, and the prejudicial impressions they might make, must be an apology for my remarks, and the freedom with which they are made.

I observe the Abbe has made a sort of epitome of a considerable part of the pamphlet Common Sense, and introduced it in that form into his publication.  But there are other places where the Abbe has borrowed freely from the said pamphlet without acknowledging it.  The difference between society and government, with which the pamphlet opens, is taken from it, and in some expressions almost literally, into the Abbe’s work, as if originally his own; and through the whole of the Abbe’s remarks on this head, the idea in Common Sense is so closely copied and pursued, that the difference is only in words, and in the arrangement of the thoughts, and not in the thoughts themselves.[3]