Is there a sensible hypocrite in America, who can start a jealousy, that religion may be in danger? From whence can this danger arise? Not from France, she claims no inch of ground upon your continent. She claims no legislative authority over you, no negative upon your laws, no right of appointing you bishops, nor of sending you missionaries. Besides, the spirit of crusading for religion is not in France. The rage for making proselytes, which has existed in former centuries, is no more. There is a spirit more liberal here in this respect, than I expected to find. Where has been the danger to the religion of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, from an alliance with France, which has subsisted with entire harmony for one hundred and fifty years, or thereabouts? But this subject is fitter for ridicule than serious argument, as nothing can be clearer than that in this enlightened tolerant age, at this vast distance, without a claim or color of authority, with an express acknowledgment and warranty of sovereignty, this, I had almost said tolerant nation, can never endanger our religion.
The longer I live in Europe, and the more I consider our affairs, the more important our alliance with France appears to me. It is a rock upon which we may safely build. Narrow and illiberal prejudices, peculiar to John Bull, with which I might perhaps have been in some degree infected when I was John Bull, have now no influence over me. I never was, however, much of John Bull. I was John Yankee, and such I shall live and die. Is Great Britain to be annihilated? No such thing. A revolution in her government may possibly take place. But whether in favor of despotism or republicanism, is the question. The scarcity of virtue, and even the semblance of it, seems an invincible obstacle to the latter. But the annihilation of a nation never takes place. It depends wholly on herself to determine whether she shall sink down into the rank of the middling powers of Europe, or whether she shall maintain the second place in the scale. If she continues this war, the first will be her fate, if she stops short in her mad career and makes peace, she may still be in the second predicament. America will grow with astonishing rapidity, and England, France, and every other nation in Europe will be the better for her prosperity. Peace, which is her dear delight, will be her wealth and her glory, for I cannot see the seed of a war with any part of the world in future, but with Great Britain, and such States as may be weak enough, if any such there should be, to become her allies. That such a peace may be speedily concluded, and that you and I may return to our farms to enjoy the fruits of it, spending our old age in recounting to our children the toils and dangers we have encountered for their benefit, is the wish of your friend,