901. BONAPARTE (N.), United States, Russia and.—[continued].
I have gone into this explanation
* * * because I am willing to
trust to your discretion the explaining me
to our honest fellow laborers, and the bringing
them to pause and reflect, if any of them
have not sufficiently reflected on the extent
of the success we ought to wish to Bonaparte,
with a view to our own interests only;
and even were we not men, to whom nothing
human should be indifferent. But is our particular
interest to make us insensible to all
sentiments of morality? Is it then become
criminal, the moral wish that the torrents
of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the
sufferings of so many human beings, good as
ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling,
the burnings of ancient cities, devastations of
great countries, the destruction of law and
order, and demoralization of the world,
should be arrested, even if it should place our
peace a little further distant? No. You and
I cannot differ in wishing that Russia, and
Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany, and
Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even
England, may retain their independence.—
To Thomas Leiper. Washington ed. vi, 283.
Ford ed., ix, 446.
(M.
Jan. 1814)
