A Federalist Warns Against French Influence on American Politics

FISHER AMES, Foreign Politics (c. 1801–1805)

While economics was one source of division in the new republic, foreign affairs was another. During the 1790s, as the French Revolution broke out, leading to the execution of the absolutist King Louis XVI and the triumph of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” Federalists and Republicans (as Jefferson’s supporters were called) took sides, interpreting the French Revolution in light of their own. Jeffersonian Republicans supported the French revolutionaries, who seemed to embrace the same republican ideals that had fueled the American Revolution. Federalists like Fisher Ames, whose essay on “Foreign Politics” is excerpted here, were horrified, especially after the French Revolution darkened into a “Reign of Terror.” For Federalists, the excesses of the French Revolution bespoke the dangers of too much liberty. Here, Ames despairs of a Jeffersonian infatuation with France.

European events have long had such a monopoly of the attention of Americans, that we scarcely find leisure or disposition to backbite and persecute each other, as much as the rage of party spirit requires. Our pride is often offended, that our country makes a figure in the world so little conspicuous, that others overlook it; and we almost forget ourselves, while we suffer our sympathy and reflections to be exclusively engrossed by the events of the foreign War.

Yet the champions of party ought to be consoled, for the diversion of any party of our patriotick energies from the domestick scene of controversy, by their own success in rendering foreign politicks subservient to their design. France, though nerve all over, does not feel the dread nor the shame of her defeats, nor the insolent joy of her victories, with more emotion than our jacobins.1 They can allege, in excuse for the deep concern they take in all the confusion and all the injustice of France, that they are not mere speculatists, nor subject to impulses that are blind and without object; but that their pure love for the people never ceases to animate them enough to imitate what they admire, and to introduce what they so long have studied, and so well understand.

The men of sense and virtue have excuses too for their anxious solicitude about European affairs: there, they may say, faction culls her poisons; and in that bloody field, at length, we can perceive the antidote is sprouting. Already the Aurora tells us, it is nonsense to talk of liberty under Buonaparte. Nevertheless, if France should be superiour in the war, and should dictate the terms of peace, our inbred faction, her faithful ally, would be superiour here. The civilized world can enjoy neither safety nor repose, if the most restless and ambitious nation in it, obtains what it has struggled for, a more than Roman sway, and a resistless power to render the interests of all other states as subservient to its own, as those of her Cisalpine allies.2 The forest that harbours one wild cat, should breed many squirrels. Ambition like that of France, requires, for its daily sustenance, tameness like that of Spain or Holland: if all her neighbours were like Britain, where could this royal tigress find prey?

So far, indeed, is the attention paid by Americans to the affairs of Europe from being a subject of reproach, that, on the contrary, no period of history will be deemed more worthy of study by our statesmen, as well as our youth, than that of the last twelve years.

In France, we behold the effects of trying by the test of experience the most plausible metaphysical principles, in appearance the most pure, yet the most surprisingly in contrast with the corruption of the national manners. Theories, fit for angels, have been adopted for the use of a multitude, who have been found, when left to what is called their self-government, unfit to be called men; as if the misrule of chaos or of pandemonium would yield to a little instruction in singing psalms and divine songs; as if the passions inherent in man, and a constituent part of his nature, were so many devils that even unbelievers could cast out, without a miracle, and without fasting and prayer. By stamping the rights of man on pocket handkerchiefs, it was supposed they were understood by those who understand nothing; and by voting them through the convention, it would cost a man his life and estate to say, that they were not established.

On grounds so solid Condorcet could proclaim to the enlightened, the fish women, and the mob of the suburbs of St. Antoine, all disciples of “the new school of philosophy,” Mr. Jefferson could assure Thomas Paine; and even the circumspect Madison could pronounce in congress, that France had improved on all known plans of government, and that her liberty was immortal.

Experience has shewn, and it ought to be of all teaching the most profitable, that any government by mere popular impulses, any plan that excites, instead of restraining, the passions of the multitude, is a despotism: it is not, even in its beginning, much less in its progress, nor in its issue and effects, liberty. As well might we suppose, that the assassin’s dagger conveys a restorative balsam to the heart, when it stabs it; or that the rottenness and dry bones of the grave will spring up again, in this life, endued with imperishable vigour and the perfection of angels. To cure expectations, at once so foolish and so sanguine, what can be more rational than to inspect sometimes the sepulchre of French liberty? The body is not deposited there, for indeed it never existed; but much instruction is to be gained by carefully considering the lying vanity of its epitaph.

The great contest between England and France, also, shews the stability and the resources of free governments, and the precariousness and wide-spreading ruin of the resort to revolutionary means. We shall not, therefore, hesitate to present, from time to time, the most correct and extensive views we can take of events in Europe.

We have made these observations, and we address them with the more deliberation to the good sense of the citizens, because it has been a part of the common place of democratick foppery to say, what have we to do with Europe? We are a world by ourselves. This they have said a thousand times, while they told us the cause of France was the cause of liberty, and inseparably our cause. Every body knows, that the mad zeal for France was wrought up with the intent to influence American politicks; and it did influence, and yet influences them. A trading nation, whose concerns extend over the commercial world, and whose interests are affected by their wars and revolutions, cannot expect to be a merely disinterested, though by good fortune it may be a neutral, spectator. Unless, therefore, we survey Europe, as well as America, we do not “take a view of the whole ground.” And if we must survey it, and our interests are concerned in the course of foreign events, it is obviously important that we should understand what we observe, and separate, as much as possible, errour from the wisdom that is to be gleaned by experience.

We invite our able patrons and correspondents to assist us in our labours; and to exercise their candour, if, at any time, we should present an imperfect or mistaken view of European affairs: we shall not wilfully misrepresent.

Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: T. B. Wait & Co., 1809), 209–212.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS