concerning the relative maritime power of France
and Great Britain. Livingston suggests that if Great Britain invade
Louisiana, who can oppose her? Once more he refers to Great Britain's
superior fleet. This interesting address concludes with the following
exordium to France: "She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men and
the favor of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, which
can neither add to her wealth nor to her strength." This, as you will
perceive, is quite a pointed remark. Throughout the Louisiana diplomacy,
and negotiations to which this diplomacy led, Livingston's would seem to
be the master American mind and prophetic vision. But I must keep to my
jackstraws. On April 17, 1803, Bonaparte's brother, Lucien, reports
a conversation held with him by Bonaparte. What purposes, what
oscillations, may have been going on deep in Bonaparte's secret mind,
no one can tell. We may guess that he did not relinquish his plan about
Louisiana definitely for some time after the thought had dawned upon him
that it would be better if he did relinquish it. But unless he was lying
to his brother Lucien on April 17, 1803, we get no mere glimpse, but
a perfectly clear sight of what he had come finally to think. It was
certainly worth while, he said to Lucien, to sell when you could what
you were certain to lose; "for the English... are aching for a chance
to capture it.... Our navy, so inferior to our neighbor's across the
Channel, will always cause our colonies to be exposed to great risks....
As to the sea, my dear fellow, you must know that there we have to lower
the flag.... The English navy is, and long will be, too dominant."

That was on April 17. On May 2, the Treaty of Cession was signed by the
exultant Livingston. Bonaparte, instead of establishing an outpost of
autocracy at New Orleans, sold to us not only the small piece of land
which we had originally in mind, but the huge piece of land whose
dimensions I have given above. We paid him fifteen millions for nearly
a million square miles. The formal transfer was made on December 17 of
that same year, 1803. There is my second jackstraw.

Thus, twenty years after the first time in 1783, Great Britain stood
between us and the designs of another nation. To that other nation her
fleet was the deciding obstacle. England did not love us so much,
but she loved France so much less. For the same reasons which I have
suggested before, self-interest, behind which lay he