8568. TREATIES OF COMMERCE, British.—[further continued].
I am sorry the British
are sending a minister to attempt a treaty.
They never made an equal commercial treaty
with any nation, and we have no right to expect
to be the first. It will place you between
the injunctions of true patriotism and the clamors
of a faction devoted to a foreign interest,
in preference to that of their own country. It
will confirm the English, too, in their practice
of whipping us into a treaty. They did it in
Jay's case, were near doing it in Monroe's, and
on failure of that, have applied the scourge
with tenfold vigor, and now come on to try its
effect. But it is the moment when we should
prove our consistency, by recurring to the
principles we dictated to Monroe, the departure
from which occasioned our rejection of his
treaty, and by protesting against Jay's treaty
being ever quoted or looked at, or even mentioned.
That form will forever be a mill-stone
round our necks unless we now rid ourselves
of it once for all. The occasion is highly favorable,
as we never can have them more in our
power.—
To President Madison. Washington ed. v, 443.
(M.
April. 1809)
