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To have
endured this, and even to have submitted, for a time, to the searching
of ships, so that not one Englishman should be allowed to skulk from
such a fight, had not been pusillanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as
English Whigs and American Democrats contended, Napoleon Bonaparte was
the armed soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution,
the sole alternative to anarchy, the _legitimate_ ruler of France; if
the responsibility of those enormous desolating wars does not lie at
his door, but belongs to George III. and the Tory party of England; if
it is a fact that Napoleon always stood ready to make a just peace,
which George III. and William Pitt refused, _not_ in the interest of
mankind and civilization, but in that of the Tory party and the allied
dynasties,--then America was right in resenting the searching and
seizure of her ships, and right, after exhausting every peaceful
expedient, in declaring war.
That this was really the point in dispute between our two parties is
shown in the debates, newspapers, and pamphlets of the time. The
Federalists, as Mr.


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