our Senators and
Representatives voted, and believed all that was printed in the
Boston _federal_ papers. The whole family, and myself with them,
believed all that Colonel Timothy Pickering had written about
impressment of seamen, and about the weakness, and wickedness of the
President and administration; we believed them all to be under the pay
and influence of Bonaparte, who we knew was the first Lieutenant of
Satan. We believed all that was said about "_Free trade and sailors'
rights_," was all stuff and nonsense, brought forward by the
Republicans, whom we called _Democrats_ and _Jacobins_, to gull the
people out of their liberty and property, in order to surrender both
to the Tyrant of France. We believed entirely that the war was
"unnecessary" and "wicked," and declared with no other design but to
injure England and gratify France. We believed also that the whole of
the administration, and every man of the Republican party, from
Jefferson and Madison, down to our ---- was either fool or knave. If
we did not believe that every republican was a scoundrel, we were sure
and certain that every scoundrel was a republican. In some points our
belief was as strong and as fixed as any in the papal dominions; for
example--we maintained stiffly that Governor Strong, Lieut. Governor
Phillips, H. G. Otis, and John Lowell and Francis Blake, Esqrs. were,
for talents, knowledge, piety and virtue, the very first men in the
United States, and ought to be at the head of the nation: or--to
express it _all_ in one word, as my sister once did, "_Federalism is
the politics of a GENTLEMAN, and of a LADY_; but _Republicanism is the
low cant of the vulgar_; of such men as your Tom Jeffersons, Jim
Madisons, and John Adams', and Col. Monroes."

With these expanded and enlightened ideas of men and things, did I,
_Perigrinus Americanus_, quit my father's house ease and plenty, to
make a short trip in a Privateer, more for a frolic than for any thing
serious, being very little concerned whether I was taken or not,
provided my capture would be the means of carrying me among the people
whom I had long adored for their superior bravery, magnanimity,
_religion_, knowledge, and justice; which opinions I had imbibed from
their own writers, in verse and prose. Beside the federal newspapers,
I had dipped into the posthumous works of Fisher Ames, enough to
inspire me with adoration of England, abhorrence of France, and a
contempt for my own country; or