2650. ENGLAND, Influence in United States.—
The English can do us, as enemies,
more harm than any other nation; and in
peace and in war, they have more means of
disturbing us internally. Their merchants
established among us, the bonds by which
our own are chained to their feet, and the
banking combinations interwoven with the
whole, have shown the extent of their control,
even during a war with her. They are the
workers of all the embarrassments our finances
have experienced during the war. Declaring
themselves bankrupt, they have been
able still to chain the government to a dependence
on them, and had the war continued,
they would have reduced us to the inability
to command a single dollar. They dared to
proclaim that they would not pay their obligations,
yet our government could not venture
to avail themselves of this opportunity
of sweeping their paper from the circulation,
and substituting their own notes bottomed on
specific taxes for redemption, which every one
would have eagerly taken and trusted, rather
than the baseless trash of bankrupt companies;
our government, I say, have still been
overawed from a contest with them, and has
even countenanced and strengthened their influence,
by proposing new establishments, with
authority to swindle yet greater sums from
our citizens. This is the British influence to
which I am an enemy, and which we must
subject to our government, or it will subject
us to that of Britain.—
To Cæsar A. Rodney. Washington ed. vi, 449.
(M.
March. 1815)
