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But writing by Mr. Dupont, I need use no cipher.  I require from him to put this into your own and no other hand, let the delay occasioned by that be what it will.

The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France, works most sorely on the United States.  On this subject the Secretary of State has written to you fully, yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally, so deep is the impression it makes on my mind.  It completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course.  Of all nations of any consideration, France is the one, which, hitherto, has offered the fewest points on which we could have any conflict of right, and the most points of a communion of interests.  From these causes we have ever looked to her as our natural friend, as one with which we never could have an occasion of difference.  Her growth, therefore, we viewed as our own, her misfortunes ours.  There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy.  It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants.  France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance.  Spain might have retained it quietly for years.  Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not, perhaps, be very long before some circumstances might arise, which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her.  Not so can it ever be in the hands of France:  the impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which, though quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded, despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising and energetic as any nation on earth; these circumstances render it impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends, when they meet in so irritable a position.  They, as well as we, must be blind, if they do not see this, and we must be very improvident if we do not begin to make arrangements on that hypothesis.  The day that France takes possession of New Orleans, fixes the sentence which is to restrain her for ever within her low-water mark.  It seals the union of two nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean.  From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.  We must turn all our attentions to a maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high ground:  and having formed and connected together a power which may render reinforcement of her settlements here impossible to France, make the