the abuse of those rights by our boatmen and navigators, which neither government can prevent, will keep up a state of irritation which cannot long be kept inactive, we should be criminally improvident not to take at once eventual measures for strengthening ourselves for the contest.  It may be said, if this object be so all-important to us, why do we not offer such a sum as to insure its purchase?  The answer is simple.  We are an agricultural people, poor in money, and owing great debts.  These will be falling due by instalments for fifteen years to come, and require from us the practice of a rigorous economy to accomplish their payment:  and it is our principle to pay to a moment whatever we have engaged, and never to engage what we cannot, and mean not, faithfully to pay.  We have calculated our resources, and find the sum to be moderate which they would enable us to pay, and we know from late trials that little can be added to it by borrowing.  The country, too, which we wish to purchase, except the portion already granted, and which must be confirmed to the private holders, is a barren sand, six hundred miles from east to west and from thirty to forty and fifty miles from north to south, formed by deposition of the sands by the Gulf Stream in its circular course round the Mexican Gulf, and which being spent after performing a semicircle, has made from its last depositions the sand-bank of East Florida.  In West Florida, indeed, there are on the borders of the rivers some rich bottoms, formed by the mud brought from the upper country.  These bottoms are all possessed by individuals.  But the spaces between river and river are mere banks of sand:  and in East Florida, there are neither rivers nor consequently any bottoms.  We cannot then make any thing by a sale of the lands to individuals.  So that it is peace alone which makes it an object with us, and which ought to make the cession of it desirable to France.  Whatever power, other than ourselves, holds the country east of the Mississippi, becomes our natural enemy.  Will such a possession do France as much good, as such an enemy may do her harm?  And how long would it be hers, were such an enemy, situated at its door, added to Great Britain?  I confess, it appears to me as essential to France to keep at peace with us, as it is to us to keep at peace with her:  and that, if this cannot be secured without some compromise as to the territory in question, it will be useful for both to make sacrifices to effect the compromise.

You see, my good friend, with what frankness I communicate with you on this subject; that I hide nothing from you, and that I am endeavoring to turn our private friendship to the good of our respective countries.  And can private friendship ever answer a nobler end than by keeping two nations at peace, who, if this new position which one of them is taking were rendered innocent, have more points of common interest, and fewer of collision than any two on earth; who become