“Note. This is a copy of the material portion of a long letter from D. Hartley, the British Commissioner in Paris, to Lord Sydenham, January, 1785. The original was sold by C. Robinson, of 21 Bond Street, London, on the 6th April, 1859, at a sale of Hartley’s MSS. and papers, chiefly relating to the United States of America. It was Hartley’s copy, in his own hand.
“The lot was No. 82 in the sale catalogue. It was bought by J. R. Smith, the London bookseller, for £2 6s. 0d.
“I had a copy made before the sale.
“Joseph Parkes.
“London, 18 July, ’59.”
The letter is as follows:—
“My Lord,—In your Lordship’s last letter to me, just before my leaving Paris, you are pleased to say that any information which I might have been able to collect of a nature to promote the mutual and reciprocal interests of Great Britain and the United States of America would be extremely acceptable to his Majesty’s government.… Annexed to this letter I have the honor of transmitting to your Lordship some papers and documents which I have received from the American ministers. One of them (No. 5) is a Map of the Continent of North America, in which the land ceded to them by the late treaty of peace is divided by parallels of latitude and longitude into fourteen new States.
“The whole project, in its full extent, would take many years in its execution, and therefore it must be far beyond the present race of men to say, ‘This shall be so.’ Nevertheless, those who have the first care of this New World will probably give it such directions and inherent influences as may guide and control its course and revolutions for ages to come. But these plans, being beyond the reach of man to predestinate, are likewise beyond the reach of comment or speculation to say what may or may not be possible, or to predict what events may hereafter be produced by time, climates, soils, adjoining nations, or by the unwieldy magnitude of empire, and the future population of millions superadded to millions. The sources of the Mississippi may be unknown; the lines of longitude and latitude may be extended into unexplored regions; and the plan of this new creation may be sketched out by a presumptuous compass, if all its intermediate uses and functions were to be suspended until the final and precise accomplishment, without failure or deviation, of this unbounded plan. But this is not the case; the immediate objects in view are limited and precise; they are of prudent thought, and within the scope of human power to measure out and to execute. The principle, indeed, is indefinite, and will be left to the test of future ages to determine its duration or extent.
“I take the liberty to suggest thus much, lest we should be led away to suppose that the councils which have produced these plans have had no wiser or more sedate views than merely the amusement of drawing meridians of ambition and high thoughts. There appear to me to be two solid and rational objects in view: the first is, by the sale of lands nearly contiguous to the present States, (receiving Congress paper in payment according to its scale of depreciation,) to extinguish the present national debt, which I understand might be discharged for about twelve millions sterling.…
“It is a new proposition to be offered to the numerous common rank of mankind in all the countries of the world, to say that there are in America fertile soils and temperate climates in which an acre of land may be purchased for a trifling consideration, which may be possessed in freedom, together with all the natural and civil rights of mankind. The Congress have already proclaimed this, and that no other qualification or name is necessary but to become settlers, without distinction of countries or persons. The European peasant, who toils for his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and industrious labor. The tide of emigration may set strongly outward from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada to this new land of promise.