But this procrastination is unavoidable. How can
expedition be expected from a body which we have saddled with an hundred
lawyers, whose trade is talking? But lies, to sow divisions among
us, are so stale an artifice of the federal prints, and are so well
understood, that they need neither contradiction nor explanation. As to
myself, my confidence in the wisdom and integrity of the administration
is so entire, that I scarcely notice what is passing, and have almost
ceased to read newspapers. Mine remain in our post-office a week or ten
days, sometimes, unasked for. I find more amusement in studies to which
I was always more attached, and from which I was dragged by the events
of the times in which I have happened to live.
I rejoice exceedingly that our war with England was single-handed. In
that of the Revolution, we had France, Spain, and Holland on our side,
and the credit of its success was given to them. On the late occasion,
unprepared and unexpecting war, we were compelled to declare it, and to
receive the attack of England, just issuing from a general war, fully
armed, and freed from all other enemies, and have not only made her
sick of it, but glad to prevent, by a peace, the capture of her adjacent
possessions, which one or two campaigns more would infallibly have made
ours. She has found that we can do her more injury than any other enemy
on earth, and henceforward will better estimate the value of our peace.
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