LETTER XXXVI.—­TO WILLIAM SHORT, August 10,1790

TO WILLIAM SHORT.

New York, August 10,1790.

Dear Sir,

This letter, with the very confidential papers it encloses, will be delivered to you by Mr. Barrett with his own hands.  If there be no war between Spain and England, they need be known to yourself alone.  But if that war be began, or whenever it shall begin, we wish you to communicate them to the Marquis de la Fayette, on whose assistance we know we can count in matters which interest both our countries.  He and you will consider how far the contents of these papers may be communicated to the Count de Montmorin, and his influence be asked with the court of Madrid.  France will be called into the war, as an ally, and not on any pretence of the quarrel being in any degree her own.  She may reasonably require, then, that Spain should do every thing which depends on her, to lessen the number of her enemies.  She cannot doubt that we shall be of that number, if she does not yield our right to the common use of the Mississippi, and the means of using and securing it.  You will observe, we state in general the necessity, not only of our having a port near the mouth of the river (without which we could make no use of the navigation at all), but of its being so well separated from the territories of Spain and her jurisdiction, as not to engender daily disputes and broils between us.  It is certain, that if Spain were to retain any jurisdiction over our entrepot, her officers would abuse that jurisdiction, and our people would abuse their privileges in it.  Both parties must foresee this, and that it will end in war.  Hence the necessity of a well defined separation.  Nature has decided what shall be the geography of that in the end, whatever it might be in the beginning, by cutting off from the adjacent countries of Florida and Louisiana, and enclosing between two of its channels, a long and narrow slip of land, called the Island of New Orleans.  The idea of ceding this could not be hazarded to Spain, in the first step:  it would be too disagreeable at first view; because this island, with its town, constitutes, at present, their principal settlement in that part of their dominions, containing about ten thousand white inhabitants of every age and sex.  Reason and events, however, may, by little and little, familiarize them to it.  That we have a right to some spot as an entrepot for our commerce, may be at once affirmed.  The expediency, too, may be expressed, of so locating it as to cut off the source of future quarrels and wars.  A disinterested eye looking on a map, will remark how conveniently this tongue of land is formed for the purpose; the Iberville and Amite channel offering a good boundary and convenient outlet, on the one side, for Florida, and the main channel an equally good boundary and outlet, on the other side, for Louisiana; while the