Dear Sir,—I have to acknowledge your favor of the 9th, and to thank you for the political information it contained. Reading the newspapers but little and that little but as the romance of the day, a word of truth now and then comes like the drop of water on the tongue of Dives. If the British ministry are changing their policy towards us, it is because their nation, or rather the city of London, which is the nation to them, is shaken as usual, by the late reverses in Spain. I have for some time been persuaded that the government of England was systematically decided to claim a dominion of the sea, and to levy contributions on all nations, by their licenses to navigate, in order to maintain that dominion to which their own resources are inadequate. The mobs of their cities are unprincipled enough to support this policy in prosperous times, but change with the tide of fortune, and the ministers, to keep their places, change with them. I wish Mr. Oakley may not embarrass you with his conditions of revoking the orders of council. Enough of the non-importation law should be reserved, 1st, to pinch them into a relinquishment of impressments, and 2d, to support those manufacturing establishments which their orders, and our interests, forced us to make.
I suppose the conquest of Spain will soon force a delicate question on you as to the Floridas and Cuba, which will offer themselves to you. Napoleon will certainly give his consent without difficulty to our receiving the Floridas, and with some difficulty possibly Cuba. And though he will disregard the obligation whenever he thinks he can break it with success, yet it has a great effect on the opinion of our people and the world to have the moral right on our side, of his agreement as well as that of the people of those countries.
Mr. Hackley's affair is really unfortunate. He has been driven into this arrangement by his distresses, which are great. He is a perfectly honest man, as is well known here where he was born, but unaccustomed to political subjects, he has not seen it in that view. But a respect for the innocence of his views cannot authorize the sanction of government to such an example.
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TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
Monticello, April 27, 1809.
Dear Sir,—Yours of the 24th came to hand last night. The correspondence between Mr. Smith and Mr. Erskine had been received three days before. I sincerely congratulate you on the change it has produced in our situation. It is the source of very general joy here, and could it have arrived one month sooner would have had important effects, not only on the elections of other States, but of this also, from which it would seem that wherever there was any considerable portion of federalism it has been so much reinforced by those of whose politics the price of wheat is the sole principle, that federalists will be returned from many districts of this State. The British ministry has been driven from its Algerine system, not by any remaining morality in the people, but by their unsteadiness under severe trial. But whencesoever it comes, I rejoice in it as the triumph of our forbearing and yet persevering system. It will lighten your anxieties, take from Cabal its most fertile ground of war, will give us peace during your time, and by the complete extinguishment of our public debt, open upon us the noblest application of revenue that has ever been exhibited by any nation. I am sorry they are sending a minister to attempt a treaty. They never made an equal commercial treaty with any nation, and we have no right to expect to be the first. It will place you between the injunctions of true patriotism and the clamors of a faction devoted to a foreign interest, in preference to that of their own country. It will confirm the English too in their practice of whipping us into a treaty. They did it in Jay's case, were near it in Monroe's, and on failure of that, have applied the scourge with tenfold vigor, and now come on to try its effect. But it is the moment when we should prove our consistence, by recurring to the principles we dictated to Monroe, the departure from which occasioned our rejection of his treaty, and by protesting against Jay's treaty being ever quoted, or looked at, or even mentioned. That form will forever be a millstone round our necks unless we now rid ourselves of it once for all. The occasion is highly favorable, as we never can have them more in our power.
As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he governed by reason. But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture. I fear his first object now is to dry up the sources of British prosperity by excluding her manufactures from the continent. He may fear that opening the ports of Europe to our vessels will open them to an inundation of British wares. He ought to be satisfied with having forced her to revoke the orders on which he pretended to retaliate, and to be particularly satisfied with us, by whose unyielding adherence to principle she has been forced into the revocation. He ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies. That he would give us the Floridas to withhold intercourse with the residue of those colonies, cannot be doubted. But that is no price; because they are ours in the first moment of the first war; and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us. But, although with difficulty, he will consent to our receiving Cuba into our Union, to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other provinces. That would be a price, and I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. We should then have only to include the north in our Confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation; and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government. As the Mentor went away before this change, and will leave France probably while it is still a secret in that hemisphere, I presume the expediency of pursuing her by a swift sailing despatch was considered. It will be objected to our receiving Cuba, that no limit can then be drawn to our future acquisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it.
Our Spring continues cold and backward, rarely one growing day without two or three cold ones following. Wheat is of very various complexions from very good to very bad. Fruit has not suffered as much as was expected, except in peculiar situations. Gardens are nearly a month behind their usual state. I thank you for the squashes from Maine; they shall be planted to-day. I salute you with sincere and constant affection.