ve done; or mama, who
gets her information from the Federal papers, second-hand, with numerous
additions and improvements made to answer party purposes, distorted and
misrepresented?

"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it is notorious in this country that they repealed them on account of the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 de