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485 Reprinted from The American Citizen (New York), January 24 and 25, 1810. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. The manuscript is in the Gouverneur Morris Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, item 856. It was also published as a pamphlet (New York: n.p., 1810), American Antiquarian Society Early American Imprints, series II (Shaw-Shoemaker), no. 21500. 33 • To the People of the United States (1810) American relations with England continued to deteriorate after Madison succeeded Jefferson as president in 1809. Morris had long thought that Madison’s handling of foreign policy as secretary of state was incompetent . As this essay indicates, he was coming to believe that as president Madison had surpassed himself. •• fELLOw CITIZENS, It may not be improper for an old friend and servant to address you, and to wish, though he has little hope, that we may have a happy year. I will not scrutinize the President’s late message, and the correspondence sent with it to Congress. There are speakers enough there, and writers enough elsewhere , to show, that if he was not out of his senses, he must have counted largely on your folly. Perhaps he has formed a just judgment, and will find you still willing to believe one who transmits an assertion with the evidence to contradict it under the same cover. Perhaps you are content to continue the laughing stock of the world, while you boast that no nation in it is so wise as yourselves. If this be so, even doze on till the whole edifice of your government comes tumbling about your ears. Such of you as are determined to believe not only without evidence, but against evidence; such of you as fondly clinging to falsehood, shut your eyes against truth, had better lay this paper on one side: it will not suit your taste. Go to your ordinary business, the Merchant to his Counting-House, the Lawyer to his Office, and the Farmer to his Barn. Wrap yourselves up in your cloak of confidence . A prick of the bayonet will make the dullest among you skip. Those who will not see now, will soon feel. There is not much time to spare, and none to lose. 486 chaPtEr 33 You were told long ago, that the persons you had chosen to rule over you were incompetent. An extreme reluctance to believe in bad motives, induces me still to cherish the opinion that our misfortunes spring from their imbecility. But the cause is not so important as the consequence. If the country is brought to ruin it will not be much matter whether that event shall have been the result of stupidity or corruption. It has been the leading maxim of our administration for at least eight years, that Great-Britain was on the verge of ruin, and it was their favourite topic of declamation before they came into power. But the fact is, that on the present first day of January , in the year of our Lord 1810, she is more powerful than at any preceding period.The tedious talk you have so often heard about the weight of her debt is flat nonsense, and the men who chatter thus, display their ignorance of what passes before their eyes and under their noses. But admit assumption , improbable as it is, that Britain shall become bankrupt: will she have a ship of the line or a frigate the less? Will she have a single soldier or a single musket the less? Or can we, in consequence of her bankruptcy, get the goods we want for nothing? Surely not. France made a bankruptcy after her revolution, and before she got back again under a single master; was her power thereby diminished? Surely not. What reason then have you to suppose that people who speak English will suffer more from such an event than those who speak French? If any such reason there be, how happened it that the United States were not ruined by becoming bankrupt during our revolutionary war? Our paper currency was then sold at a hundred for one, and we have not heard that the British bank notes were below par; but we have seen our merchants, during that embargo which was to ruin Britain, give eleven hard dollars for ten in those notes. Is this the bankruptcy you were taught to believe in? I tell you that if your rulers believed in it themselves they were arrant blockheads; and appeal to the fact. But if...

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