own control, if it could be done by fair means.  We consequently entered upon a course of action precisely such as a European continental state would have followed under like circumstances.  In order to get possession of the territory in which our interests were involved, we bargained and manoeuvred and threatened; and although Jefferson’s methods were peaceful enough, few will be inclined to claim that they were marked by excess of scrupulousness, or even of adherence to his own political convictions.  From the highly moral standpoint, the acquisition of Louisiana under the actual conditions—­being the purchase from a government which had no right to sell, in defiance of the remonstrance addressed to us by the power who had ceded the territory upon the express condition that it should not so be sold, but which was too weak to enforce its just reclamation against both Napoleon and ourselves—­reduces itself pretty much to a choice between overreaching and violence, as the less repulsive means of compassing an end in itself both desirable and proper; nor does the attempt, by strained construction, to wrest West Florida into the bargain give a higher tone to the transaction.  As a matter of policy, however, there is no doubt that our government was most wise; and the transfer, as well as the incorporation, of the territory was facilitated by the meagreness of the population that went with the soil.  With all our love of freedom, it is not likely that many qualms were felt as to the political inclinations of the people concerning their transfer of allegiance.  In questions of great import to nations or to the world, the wishes, or interests, or technical rights, of minorities must yield, and there is not necessarily any more injustice in this than in their yielding to a majority at the polls.

While the need of continental expansion pressed thus heavily upon the statesmen of Jefferson’s era, questions relating to more distant interests were very properly postponed.  At the time that matters of such immediate importance were pending, to enter willingly upon the consideration of subjects our concern in which was more remote, either in time or place, would have entailed a dissemination of attention and of power that is as greatly to be deprecated in statesmanship as it is in the operations of war.  Still, while the government of the day would gladly have avoided such complications, it found, as have the statesmen of all times, that if external interests exist, whatsoever their character, they cannot be ignored, nor can the measures which prudence dictates for their protection be neglected with safety.  Without political ambitions outside the continent, the commercial enterprise of the people brought our interests into violent antagonism with clear, unmistakable, and vital interests of foreign belligerent states; for we shall sorely misread the lessons of 1812, and of the events which led to it, if we fail to see that the questions in dispute involved