First.  With the nations holding important possessions in America we are ready to exchange the rights of native citizens, provided they be extended through the whole possessions of both parties; but the propositions of Spain made on the former occasion (a copy of which accompanies this) were that we should give their merchants, vessels, and productions the privileges of native merchants, vessels, and productions through the whole of our possessions, and they give the same to ours only in Spain and the Canaries.  This is inadmissible, because unequal; and as we believe that Spain is not ripe for an equal exchange on this basis, we avoid proposing it.

Second.  Though treaties which merely exchange the rights of the most favored nations are not without all inconvenience, yet they have their conveniences also.  It is an important one that they leave each party free to make what internal regulations they please, and to give what preferences they find expedient to native merchants, vessels, and productions; and as we already have treaties on this basis with France, Holland, Sweden, and Prussia, the two former of which are perpetual, it will be but small additional embarrassment to extend it to Spain.  On the contrary, we are sensible it is right to place that nation on the most favored footing, whether we have a treaty with them or not, and it can do us no harm to secure by treaty a reciprocation of the right.

Of the four treaties before mentioned, either the French or the Prussian might be taken as a model; but it would be useless to propose the Prussian, because we have already supposed that Spain would never consent to those articles which give to each party access to all the dominions of the other; and without this equivalent we would not agree to tie our own hands so materially in war as would be done by the twenty-third article, which renounces the right of fitting out privateers or of capturing merchant vessels.  The French treaty, therefore, is proposed as the model.  In this, however, the following changes are to be made: 

  We should be admitted to all the dominions of Spain to which any
  other foreign nation is or may be admitted.

  Article 5, being an exemption from a particular duty in France,
  will of course be omitted as inapplicable to Spain.

Article 8 to be omitted as unnecessary with Morocco, and inefficacious and little honorable with any of the Barbary powers; but it may furnish occasion to sound Spain on the project of a convention of the powers at war with the Barbary States to keep up by rotation a constant cruise of a given force on their coasts till they shall be compelled to renounce forever and against all nations their predatory practices.  Perhaps the infidelities of the Algerines to their treaty of peace with Spain, though the latter does not choose to break openly, may induce her to subsidize us to cruise against them with a given force.

  Articles 9 and 10, concerning fisheries, to be omitted as
  inapplicable.