Such a proportion of property, imaginary and baseless as it is, cannot be reduced to vapor, but with great explosion.  She will rise out of its ruins, however, because her lands, her houses, her arts, will remain, and the greater part of her men.  And these will give her again that place among nations which is proportioned to her natural means, and which we all wish her to hold.  We believe that the just standing of all nations is the health and security of all.  We consider the overwhelming power of England on the ocean, and of France on the land, as destructive of the prosperity and happiness of the world, and wish both to be reduced only to the necessity of observing moral duties.  We believe no more in Bonaparte’s fighting merely for the liberty of the seas, than in Great Britain’s fighting for the liberties of mankind.  The object of both is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth, and the resources of other nations.  We resist the enterprises of England first, because they first come vitally home to us.  And our feelings repel the logic of bearing the lash of George the III. for fear of that of Bonaparte at some future day.  When the wrongs of France shall reach us with equal effect, we shall resist them also.  But one at a time is enough:  and having offered a choice to the champions, England first takes up the gauntlet.

The English newspapers suppose me the personal enemy of their nation.  I am not so.  I am an enemy to its injuries, as I am to those of France.  If I could permit myself to have national partialities, and if the conduct of England would have permitted them to be directed towards her, they would have been so.  I thought that, in the administration of Mr. Addington, I discovered some dispositions towards justice, and even friendship and respect for us, and began to pave the way for cherishing these dispositions, and improving them into ties of mutual good will.  But we had then a federal minister there, whose dispositions to believe himself, and to inspire others with a belief, in our sincerity, his subsequent conduct has brought into doubt; and poor Merry, the English minister here, had learned nothing of diplomacy but its suspicions, without head enough to distinguish when they were misplaced.  Mr. Addington and Mr. Fox passed away too soon to avail the two countries of their dispositions.  Had I been personally hostile to England, and biassed in favor of either the character or views of her great antagonist, the affair of the Chesapeake put war into my hand.  I had only to open it, and let havoc loose.  But if ever I was gratified with the possession of power, and of the confidence of those who had entrusted me with it, it was on that occasion, when I was enabled to use both for the prevention of war, towards which the torrent of passion here was directed almost irresistibly, and when not another person in the United States, less supported by authority and favor, could have resisted it.  And now that a definitive adherence to her impressments and orders of council renders war no longer avoidable, my earnest prayer is, that our government may enter into no compact of common cause with the other belligerent, but keep us free to make a separate peace, whenever England will separately give us peace, and future security.  But Lord Liverpool is our witness, that this can never be but by her removal from our neighborhood.