Oliver Goldsmith is not usually associated with the foreign policy of the United States. Nevertheless a speech attributed to the ‘Indigent Philosopher’, first published in the London Lloyd’s Evening Post in February 1762 and included in Goldsmith’s Essays (1765; 2nd corrected edn 1766), was reprinted on three separate occasions, at the conclusion of new editions of the author’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).