5534. MORALITY (National), Abandonment of.—[continued].
It has been peculiarly
unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion
in the history of mankind, at which we were
called to take a share in the direction of their
affairs, was such an one as history has never
before presented. At any other period, the
even-handed justice we have observed towards
all nations, the efforts we have made to merit
their esteem by every act which candor or
liberality could exercise, would have preserved
our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence
of all other nations in our faith and
probity. But the hurricane which is now blasting
the world, physical and moral, has prostrated
all the mounds of reason as well as right.
All those calculations which, at any other
period, would have been deemed honorable, of
the existence of a moral sense in man, individually
or associated, of the connection which the
laws of nature have established between his
duties and his interests, of a regard for honest
fame and the esteem of our fellow men, have
been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences
of imbecility. As if it could be a folly for an
honest man to suppose that another could be
honest also, when it is their interest to be so.
And when is this state of things to end? The
death of Bonaparte would, to be sure, remove
the first and chiefest apostle of the desolation
of men and morals, and might withdraw
the scourge of the land. But what is to restore
order and safety on the ocean? The death of
George III.? Not at all. He is only stupid;
and his ministers, however weak and profligate
in morals, are ephemeral. But his nation is
permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant
of the ocean. The principle that force is right,
is become the principle of the nation itself.
They would not permit an honest minister, were
accident to bring such an one into power, to
relax their system of lawless piracy. These
were the difficulties when I was with you. I
know they are not lessened, and I pity you.—
To Caesar A. Rodney. Washington ed. v, 500.
Ford ed., ix, 271.
(M.
Feb. 1810)
