Published By 235 East 44th St. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1785 Printed in U.S.A. REMARKS, &c. LETTER I. General and preliminary Obfervations. SIR, I HAVE just read, with all the attention which it was in my power to pay the fubject, the different conftitutions formed by the United States of America for their respective uses; and, in obedience to your defire, I do myself the honor to submit to your perusal my fentiments concern ing them; but not without expreffing my hopes that you will obligingly point out to me the light in which I ought to view them. Whilft almost every European nation remains plunged in ignorance respecting the. conftitutive principles of fociety, and only regards the people who compose it as cattle upon a farm managed for the particular and exclufive benefit of the owner, we become at once astonished and inftructed by the circumstance that your thirteen republics have, in the fame moment, difcovered the real dignity of man, and proceeded to draw from the fources of the most enlightened philofophy thofe humane principles on which they mean to build their forms of government. Happily for you, the kings of England, when granting to your ancestors charters. for the establishment of your colonies, fuf fered fered themselves to be guided by their prejudices and their paffions; and were actuated folely by ideas which sprang from avarice and ambition *. By difengaging themselves from a multitude of citizens, who hung upon them like a dead weight, they faw before them the rife and establishment of new provinces deftined to increase, the majefty of the British empire. At the fame time, they flattered themselves with the prospect of opening a fresh source of riches for the commerce of the mothercountry; and felt a defire to lead you forward to profperity, in order that they might enjoy even more than yourselves the benefits attendant on its progrefs. You must have been loft beyond redemption, had these * We doubtless, fhould allow too much to this remark by calling it indifputable. The original charters granted to the American colonifts, far from being dictated by the prejudices, paffions, ambition and avarice of kings, were congenial with the pure fpirit of the British conflitution. Nor do the Americans appear to have complained of their primitive nature and views, but of their fubfequent violation, K., princes princes proved fufficiently converfant with the baneful politics of a Machiaval to impofe laws upon you of fervice to the purposes of their ambition. Their ignorance was your fingular advantage. Not wandering from the track of government in England, they introduced, amongst your ancestors, rules and laws of administration, which, by perpetually keeping alive your recollection that you were the descendants of a free people, invited you to become bufied in a close attention to your common interefts. During a long period, you were facrificed to the interefts of the parent-ftate; and you regarded this offering as a tribute of which juftice demanded the payment, in return for an extended and (to yourselves) a necessary protection. Subfequent to the last war, during the course of which the French loft their whole poffeffions on your continent, you discovered that your mafters were become enfeebled even by their victories; you felt, at length, your own powers; whilft the |