9072. WEST INDIES, Commerce with [further continued].
Access to the West Indies
is indispensably necessary to us. Yet how gain it, when it is the established system of
these nations [France and England] to exclude
all foreigners from their colonies? The only
chance seems to be this: our commerce to the
mother countries is valuable to them. We must
endeavor, then, to make this the price of an admission
into their West Indies, and to those
who refuse the admission, we must refuse our
commerce, or load theirs by odious discriminations
in our ports.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. i, 351.
Ford ed., iv, 58.
(P.
1785)
