8400. TERRITORY, Expansion of.—
Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest
from which all America, North and South, is
to be peopled. We should take care, too, not
to think it for the interest of that great Continent
to press too soon on the Spaniards.
Those countries cannot be in better hands.
My fear is that they are too feeble to hold
them till our population can be sufficiently
advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.—
To Archibald Stuart. Washington ed. i, 518.
Ford ed., iv, 188.
(P.
1786)
