Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/151

1807. not only that the Anglo-Americans have remained in reality dependent on Great Britain, but even that this state of subjection conforms with their affections as well as with their habits. He will also be convinced that France has, and will ever have, nothing to hope from the dispositions of a people that conceives no idea of glory, of grandeur, of justice; that shows itself the constant enemy of liberal principles; and that is disposed to suffer every kind of humiliation, provided it can satisfy both its sordid avarice and its projects of usurpation over the Floridas."

Scandalized at the rapid evaporation of American courage, Turreau could explain it only as due to the natural defects of "a motley people, that will never have true patriotism, because it has no object of common interest;" a nation which looked on the most shameless outrages of its own virtue as only "unfortunate events." Yet one point remained which, although to every American it seemed most natural, was incomprehensible to the Frenchman, whose anger with America was due not so much to the dependence of the United States on England, as to their independence of France.


 * "What will doubtless astonish those who know the Americans but imperfectly, and what has surprised me myself,—me, who have a very bad opinion of this people, and who believe it just,—is the aversion (éloignement)—and I soften the word—which it has preserved for the French at the very moment when everything should recall a glorious and useful memory. It is hardly to be believed, yet is the exact truth, that in perhaps