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Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
Monticello Apr. 27. 09.
Dear Sir
Yours of the 24th. came to hand last night. the correspondence
between mr Smith & mr Erskine had been recieved 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, &
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 it's 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 & yet persevering system.
it will lighten your anxieties, take from cabal it's most fertile
ground of war, will give us peace during your time, & by the
compleat 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, & we
have no right to expect to be the first. it will place you between
the injunctions of true patriotism & 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, & on failure of that, have applied the scourge
with tenfold vigour, & now come on to try it's 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 for ever 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, & 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 withold
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, & until a war they are of no particular
necessity to us. but, altho' with difficulty, he will consent
to our recieving Cuba into our union to prevent our aid to Mexico
& the other provinces. that would be a price, & I would
immediately erect a column on the Southernmost limit of Cuba &
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: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before
so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government.
as the Mentor went away before this change, & will leave France
probably. . .
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