France, every advantage that our allies might obtain would be doubled in its effect.  Disasters on the one side might have a fair chance of being compensated by victories on the other.  Had we brought the main of our force to bear upon that quarter, all the operations of the British and Imperial crowns would have been combined.  The war would have had system, correspondence, and a certain direction.  But as the war has been pursued, the operations of the two crowns have not the smallest degree of mutual bearing or relation.

Had acquisitions in the West Indies been our object, on success in France, everything reasonable in those remote parts might be demanded with decorum, and justice, and a sure effect.  Well might we call for a recompence in America, for those services to which Europe owed its safety.  Having abandoned this obvious policy connected with principle, we have seen the regicide power taking the reverse course, and making real conquests in the West Indies, to which all our dear-bought advantages (if we could hold them) are mean and contemptible.  The noblest island within the tropics, worth all that we possess put together, is, by the vassal Spaniard, delivered into her hands.  The island of Hispaniola (of which we have but one poor corner, by a slippery hold) is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in fertility is far superior.  The part possessed by Spain, of that great island, made for the seat and centre of a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as the French division had been, before it was systematically destroyed by the cannibal republic; but it is not only the far larger, but the far more salubrious and more fertile part.

It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians without, as I can find, any public reclamation on our part, not only in contravention to one of the fundamental treaties that compose the public law of Europe, but in defiance of the fundamental colonial policy of Spain herself.  This part of the treaty of Utrecht was made for great general ends unquestionably; but whilst it provided for those general ends, it was in affirmance of that particular policy.  It was not to injure, but to save Spain by making a settlement of her estate, which prohibited her to alienate to France.  It is her policy not to see the balance of West Indian power overturned by France or by Great Britain.  Whilst the monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled cession was what the influence of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon never dared to attempt on the younger:  but cannibal terror has been more powerful than family influence.  The Bourbon monarchy of Spain is united to the republic of France, by what may be truly called the ties of blood.