8042. SPAIN, Incitement of Indians.—[further continued] .
We have certainly been
always desirous to avoid whatever might disturb
our harmony with Spain. We should be
still more so, at a moment when we see that
nation making part of so powerful a confederacy
as is formed in Europe, and under particular
good understanding with England, our other
neighbor. In so delicate a position, therefore,
instead of expressing our sense of these things,
by way of answer to Messrs. Viar and Jaudenes,
the President has thought it better that
it should be done to you, and to trust to your
discretion the moment, the measure, and the
form of communicating it to the Court of Madrid.
The actual state of Europe at the time
you will receive this, the solidity of the confederacy,
and especially, as between Spain and
England, the temper and views of the former,
or of both, towards us, the state of your negotiation,
are circumstances which will enable you
better to decide how far it may be necessary to
soften, or even, perhaps, to suppress, the expressions
of our sentiments on this subject.
To your discretion, therefore, it is committed
by the President, to let the Court of Spain see
how impossible it is for us to submit with folded
arms, to be butchered by these savages, and to
prepare them to view, with a just eye, the more
vigorous measures we must pursue to put an
end to their atrocities, if the moderate ones we
are now taking, should fail of that effect.—
To Carmichael and Short. Washington ed. iii, 567.
Ford ed., vi, 272.
(Pa.,
May. 1793)
