200. AGGRESSION, Encouraging.—
It
is to be lamented that any of our citizens, not
thinking with the mass of the nation as to the
principles of our government, or of its administration,
and seeing all its proceedings
with a prejudiced eye, should so misconceive
and misrepresent our situation as to encourage
aggressions from foreign nations. Our expectation
is, that their distempered views
will be understood by others as they are by
ourselves; but should wars be the consequence
of these delusions, and the errors of
our dissatisfied citizens find atonement only
in the blood of their sounder brethren, we
must meet it as an evil necessarily flowing
from that liberty of speaking and writing
which guards our other liberties.—
R. to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans. Washington ed. viii, 128.
(May. 1808)
