Yet
it would reconcile neither. It would only change the topic of abuse
with the former, and not cure the mental disease of the latter. It
would prevent our eastern capitalists and seamen from employment in
privateering, take away the only chance of conciliating them, and keep
them at home, idle, to swell the discontents; it would completely disarm
us of the most powerful weapon we can employ against Great Britain, by
shutting every port to our prizes, and yet would not add a single
vessel to their number; it would shut every market to our agricultural
productions, and engender impatience and discontent with that class
which, in fact, composes the nation; it would insulate us in general
negotiations for peace, making all the parties our opposers, and very
indifferent about peace with us, if they have it with the rest of the
world; and would exhibit a solecism worthy of Don Quixotte only, that
of a choice to fight two enemies at a time, rather than to take them
by succession. And the only motive for all this is a sublimated
impartiality, at which the world will laugh, and our own people will
turn upon us in mass as soon as it is explained to them, as it will be
by the very persons who are now laying that snare. These are the hasty
views of one who rarely thinks on these subjects. Your own will
be better, and I pray to them every success, and to yourself every
felicity.
Th: Jefferson.
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