Lydia Hoyt Farmer

“ They envy the glory that was acquired upon the American soil, by the side of the immortal Washington, and the defence of your noble rights.
“They envy that glory which has been acquired on the soil of France, in the midst of the troubles of Paris and of Versailles, where, in breasting the storm, he wanted courage as little in the struggles of debate as he did in contending with the sword. They envy the glory which covers the brow whitened by age, but still sparkling with the fire of liberty and of patriotism. ”

“ But since I control free men by the imperious will of a chief, it is necessary that we all feel—general, officers, and soldiers—that in this coming war it is a combat to the death between our principles and the pretensions of despots. We must work for the rights of each citizen and the safety of all. We must work for the constitution which we have sworn by, and for the sacred cause of liberty and equality. In short, we must work for the National Sovereignty, by which only we shall be able to resist any such combination of force and danger as there may be ”

“ Yes, gentlemen, our arms shall be stretched forth together, and, at the same instant, our brothers from all parts of France shall utter the oath which will unite them together. May the solemnity of that great day be the signal of the conciliation of parties, of the oblivion of resentments, and of the establishment of public peace and happiness. And fear not that this holy enthusiasm will hurry us beyond the proper and prescribed limits of public order. Under the protection of the law, the standard of liberty shall never become the rallying point of license and disorder. ”

“ Let the royal authority be untouched, for it is guaranteed by the constitution; let it be independent, for its independence is one of the springs of our liberty; let the king be revered, for he is invested with the majesty of the nation; let him choose a ministry which wears the chain of no faction; and if traitors exist, let them perish under the sword of the law.”
No other man in France would have dared to write such a letter; and this brave letter lost him his popularity, for the masses were imbued with the influence of the Jacobins. ”

“ How shall I express the value which my heart attaches to a testimony of esteem so glorious for me? The family of Mount Vernon honor me beyond my hopes; for Washington, from the hands of La Fayette, is the most sublime recompense that man could desire.
“Washington was the courageous protector of social reform, and you, sir, you are the heroic citizen, the champion of liberty, who served America with the one hand, and the Old World with the other. What mortal could suppose himself worthy of the honor with which you deign to overwhelm me? ”

“ In that illustrious catalogue of names which she claims as of her children, and with honest pride holds up to the admiration of other nations, the name of La Fayette has already for centuries been enrolled. And it shall henceforth burnish into brighter fame; for if, in after days, a Frenchman shall be called to indicate the character of his nation by that of one individual during the age in which we live, the blood of lofty patriotism shall mantle in his cheek, the fire of conscious virtue shall sparkle in his eye, and he shall pronounce the name of La Fayette. ”

“ The flower of the young aristocracy of France, in their brilliant uniforms, and the farmers and frontiersmen of America, in their faded continentals, bound by a common baptism of blood, became brothers in the knighthood of liberty. With emulous eagerness to be in at the death, while they shared the glory, they stormed the redoubts at Yorktown, and compelled the surrender of Cornwallis and army. While this practically ended the war, it strengthened the alliance and cemented the friendship between the two great peoples. ”

“ Whatever sentiments of pride may be reasonably excited by such marks of approbation, I am not the less sensible of the feelings of gratitude, nor of the satisfaction of believing that my efforts have, in some measure, been considered as useful to a cause in which my heart is so deeply interested. Have the goodness, Sir, to present to Congress my unfeigned and humble thanks, springing from the bottom of my heart, and accompanied with the assurances of my sincere and perfect attachment, as the only homage worthy of being offered to the representatives of a free people. ”

“ Gentlemen, I come to acknowledge the last testimonies of your kindness with all the warmth of a heart whose first desire, after that of serving the people, is to be loved by them, and to express my astonishment at the importance they deign to attach to an individual, in a free country, where nothing should be of real importance except law. If my conduct on this occasion could be regulated by my sentiments of gratitude and affection, I should only reply to the regrets with which you and the National Guard had honored me by yielding obedience to your entreaties ”

“ It is the homage of America to the Nestor of the Revolution. Her early warriors are now no more. Her Franklins and Washingtons have long since sunk, one after another, amid the tears of their people, into an illustrious tomb. One commander alone remains who fought at Flat-Bush, at Brandywine, and at Yorktown. What wonder, 365then, that the honors, and almost the merits, of the extinguished mighty should seem to concentrate around their sole surviving fellow? Generation after generation has sundered him from everything in America that could excite rivalry and add a sting to passion. ”

“ La Fayette immediately resigned his position at Metz, and hastened to Paris, determined to devote his life and fortune to the aid of the courageous band of patriots who had just declared their independence.
Knowing the opposition he would meet from family, friends, and the government, he made his preparations with the greatest secrecy, not even revealing his intentions to his wife, to whom he was most devoted. His heaven-born principles of liberty could no longer be kept in check by inaction, and he was ready to sacrifice every personal interest in life to the cause of oppressed humanity. ”

“ Thus ended in the horrors of the French Revolution La Fayette’s first fight for liberty at home. After five years of untold sufferings, spurning release at the price of his allegiance to monarchy, holding with sublime faith, amidst the most disheartening and discouraging surroundings, to the principles of freedom for all, he was released by the sword of Napoleon Bonaparte, to find that the untamed ferocity of the Revolution had been trained to the service of the most brilliant, captivating, and resistless of military despotisms by the mighty genius of the great Dictator. ”

“ When I was in Europe, I thought that here almost every man was a lover of liberty, and would rather die free than live a slave. You can conceive of my astonishment when I saw that Toryism was as openly professed as Whiggism itself; however, at that time I believed that all good Americans were united together; that the confidence of Congress in you was unbounded. Then I entertained the belief that America would be independent in case she should not lose you. ”

“ LA FAYETTE was not only the Knight of Liberty in two worlds and in two centuries, but was also the champion of law and order. Other men have fought for freedom; but few men in history have so truly and broadly comprehended the indissoluble tie which must ever bind liberty to law, if the shackles of oppression be unloosed, and the equal rights of men become the watchwords of national peace and prosperity. ”

“ After having clandestinely attacked our institutions by all the means which fraud and hypocrisy gave him, he resolved, when he thought himself strong enough, to destroy them openly; to drown them in the blood of the French. Some five days have sufficed to annihilate his corrupted government, which has been only a permanent conspiracy against the liberty and prosperity of France. The nation alone is standing adorned with those national colors which it has conquered with its blood. It will have a government and laws worthy of itself. ”

“ I think we shall have peace! But believe me, that question depends on the voice of one man—and that man is General La Fayette. If, on Friday night, when twelve thousand of the bravest and most intelligent of the youths of Paris marched down to the Chamber of Deputies to demand that there should be no hereditary peerage, and, in fact, no Chamber of Peers; if, I say, at that moment General La Fayette had said to those brave young men, ‘Yes, my friends, we will have a republic,’ before twenty-four hours France would have been declared a republic by the people. ”

“ Address: “At length we again behold you, grown younger from the atmosphere of liberty which you have been breathing, and the spectacle of the happiness of a powerful and grateful people, which you have contemplated with delight. Like the Americans, we could wish to describe to you our love, pleasure, and admiration; but these sentiments, agitating too strongly our hearts, deprive us of the power of so doing.” ”

“ The cherishing of that union between the states, as it has been the farewell entreaty of our great paternal Washington, and will ever have the dying prayer of every American patriot, so it has become the sacred pledge of the emancipation of the world, an object in which I am happy to observe that the American people, while they give the animating example of successful free institutions in return for an evil entailed upon them by Europe, and of which a liberal and enlightened sense is everywhere more and more generally felt, show themselves every day more anxiously interested. ”

“ His last years were passed in peace crowned with the undying lustre of well-merited fame, and his self-sacrificing devotion in the cause of truth and liberty received its just remuneration in the adoring love of the people of two continents, united by his patriotic zeal in a brotherhood sworn to defend the glorious rights of freedom and humanity. Few men have been so universally idolized and so universally respected. His glory did not blaze with the dazzling brilliancy of Napoleon’s fame, nor can it be said to have equalled that of Washington ”

“ To us, twenty-five millions of people are looking to guard from further desecration the sacred ark of liberty, to release them from the burdensome yoke which has so long crushed them, and to give them back their own inalienable right to peace, liberty, and happiness. Gentlemen, an attempt is made to destroy the freedom of your deliberations. The iron chain of despotic proscription is laid upon you. A military force surrounds your Assembly. Where are the enemies of France? Is Catiline at our gates? ”

“ Under this supposition, my dear friend, at a moment when no one power of continental Europe can resist the French Republic, I believe it conformable to honor and to the interests of the United States to come half way toward a reconciliation. Never, and much less since your declarations, would I be so unjust towards any one of my best friends as to suppose that the spirit of party prejudices, or private grievances, could, under such grave circumstances, influence their conduct. Let America, so far as she has been wronged, maintain her dignity and her rights ”

“ If, when I return to the midst of my fellow-citizens, it is believed that I can, in any manner, promote the prosperity of America, if my most strenuous exertions can promise any useful results, I trust, Sir, that I shall always be considered as the man who has the prosperity of the United States most at heart, and who entertains for their representatives the most perfect love and esteem. ”

“ France, whether free or not, is still our country, and there are more germs of liberty in her democratic organization than could enter into the counter-revolution. Her adversaries are the decided enemies of our purest principles, and have taken up arms only to accomplish her utter destruction. If it appears unsuitable that, when Europe is divided into two bands, a young man of nineteen years of age should be found in neither, it is evident that the place of a patriot—of my son—can only be under our national standards. ”

“ I do not see in the great quarrel of the east, as regards ourselves, anything beyond our importance as an intermediate power in what is called the balance of Europe; only two classes, the oppressors and the oppressed; in the demarkation of states, nothing but their natural limits; in the well-being of a people, nothing but the advantage of all; and in the policy of France, nothing but a liberal and independent part to act. You know, gentlemen, that great and powerful alliance which would enslave and brutalize the human family. ”

“ During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the dispersion of every political storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering and animating, with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt in the same holy cause. ”

“ On the 20th of May, 1834, as the first blush of dawn 473was seen in the east, and the black curtains of the night were lifted, and the promise of a new day glowed in the distant horizon; as the birds chanted their morning matins of praise, and the earth, thrilled by the touch of nature, awoke to renewed beauty,—the vail which shrouds the unknown beyond was parted by unseen fingers, and the soul of La Fayette was wafted by ministering spirits into the presence of the Almighty Monarch of heaven and earth, whose Word had gone forth to all the world, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” ”

“ Now that his Majesty has accepted the constitution, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, who would not hope? La Fayette has moved for an amnesty, for universal forgiving and forgetting of revolutionary faults; and now surely the glorious revolution, cleared of its rubbish, is complete.... Welcome, surely, to all right hearts, is La Fayette’s chivalrous amnesty. The National Constituent Assembly declares that it has finished its mission; so, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysées, and crackle of fireworks, and glad deray, has the first National Assembly vanished.... ”