England has misrepresented to all Europe this ground of the war.  She has called it a new pretension, set up since the repeal of her orders of council.  She knows there has never been a moment of suspension of our reclamations against it, from General Washington’s time inclusive, to the present day:  and that it is distinctly stated in our declaration of war, as one of its principal causes.  She has pretended we have entered into the war, to establish the principle of ‘free bottoms, free goods,’ or to protect her seamen against her own right over them.  We contend for neither of these.  She pretends we are partial to France; that we have observed a fraudulent and unfaithful neutrality between her and her enemy.  She knows this to be false, and that if there has been any inequality in our proceedings towards the belligerents, it has been in her favor.  Her ministers are in possession of full proofs of this.  Our accepting at once, and sincerely, the mediation of the virtuous Alexander, their greatest friend, and the most aggravated enemy of Bonaparte, sufficiently proves whether we have partialities on the side of her enemy.  I sincerely pray that this mediation may produce a just peace.  It will prove that the immortal character, which has first stopped by war the career of the destroyer of mankind, is the friend of peace, of justice, of human happiness, and the patron of unoffending and injured nations.  He is too honest and impartial to countenance propositions of peace derogatory to the freedom of the seas.

Shall I apologize to you, my dear Madam, for this long political letter?  But yours justifies the subject, and my feelings must plead for the unreserved expression of them; and they have been the less reserved, as being from a private citizen, retired from all connection with the government of his country, and whose ideas, expressed without communication with any one, are neither known, nor imputable to them.

The dangers of the sea are now so great, and the possibilities of interception by sea and land such, that I shall subscribe no name to this letter.  You will know from whom it comes, by its reference to the date of time and place of yours, as well as by its subject in answer to that.  This omission must not lessen in your view the assurances of my great esteem, of my sincere sympathies for the share which you bear in the afflictions of your country, and the deprivations to which a lawless will has subjected you.  In return, you enjoy the dignified satisfaction of having met them, rather than be yoked, with the abject, to his car; and that, in withdrawing from oppression, you have followed the virtuous example of a father, whose name will ever be dear to your country and to mankind.  With my prayers that you may be restored to it, that you may see it re-established in that temperate portion of liberty which does not infer either anarchy or licentiousness, in that high degree of prosperity which would be the consequence of such