And as an
additional insult, they are called on for a formal disavowal of
conditions and pretensions advanced by the French Government for which
the United States are so far from having made themselves responsible
that, in official explanations which have been published to the world,
and in a correspondence of the American minister at London with the
British minister for foreign affairs such a responsibility was
explicitly and emphatically disclaimed.
It has become, indeed, sufficiently certain that the commerce of
the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the
belligerent rights of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of
her enemies, which she herself supplies; but as interfering with the
monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She
carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend that she may
the better carry on a commerce with an enemy--a commerce polluted by the
forgeries and perjuries which are for the most part the only passports
by which it can succeed.
Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured
nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under
successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their
market, the loss of which could not but outweigh the profits accruing
from her restrictions of our commerce with other nations.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77