Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/424

414 one foreign nation, and to exaggerate and misrepresent the conduct of another; that the measures pursued are calculated and designed to force us into a war with Great Britain,—a war which would be extremely detrimental to our agriculture, fatal to our commerce, and which would probably deprive us forever of the Bank fishery,—and to unite us in alliance with France, whose embrace is death."

January 26 the town of Plymouth voted —


 * "That by the partial and insidious management of our external relations, by a servile compliance with the views of one belligerent whose restless ambition is grasping at the subjugation of the civilized world, and by the unnecessary provocations offered to another, magnanimously contending for its own existence and the emancipation of the oppressed, our national peace is endangered, and our national dignity and good faith sacrificed on the altar of duplicity."

January 23 the town of Wells, in the district of Maine, voted —


 * "That we deprecate that cringing sycophancy which has marked the conduct of our national government toward the tyrant of Europe, while we view with indignation and alarm its hostility toward Great Britain."

On the same day Gloucester spoke in language still more insulting to the national government: —


 * "We see not only the purse-strings of our nation in the hands of a Frenchified Genevan, but all our naval