ls, dealings
may be carried on as anvantageously[sp.], perhaps more so, while their
continuance depends on a voluntary good treatment, as if fixed by a
contract, which, when it becomes injurious to either, is made, by forced
constructions, to mean what suits them, and becomes a cause of war
instead of a bond of peace.

We wish to be on the closest terms of friendship with Naples, and we
will prove it by giving to her citizens, vessels, and goods all the
privileges of the most favored nation; and while we do this voluntarily,
we cannot doubt they will voluntarily do the same for us. Our interests
against the Barbaresques being also the same, we have little doubt she
will give us every facility to insure them, which our situation may ask
and hers admit. It is not, then, from a want of friendship that we do
not propose a treaty with Naples, but because it is against our system
to embarrass ourselves with treaties, or to entangle ourselves at
all with the affairs of Europe. The kind offices we receive from that
government are more sensibly felt, as such, than they would be, if
rendered only as due to us by treaty.

Five fine frigates left the Chesapeake the 1st instant for Tripoli,
which, in addition to the force now there, will, I trust, recover the
credit which Commodore Morris's two years' sleep lost us, and for which
he has been broke. I think they will make Tripoli sensible, that they
mistake their interest in choosing war with us; and Tunis also, should
she have declared war, as we expect, and almost wish.

Notwithstanding this little diversion, we pay seven or eight millions of
dollars annually of our public debt, and shall completely discharge
it in twelve years more. That done, our annual revenue, now thirteen
millions of dollars, which by that time will be twenty-five, will pay
the expenses of any war we may be forced into, without new taxes or
loans. The spirit of republicanism is now in almost all its ancient
vigor, five sixths of the people being with us. Fourteen of the
seventeen States are completely with us, and two of the other three will
be in one year. We have now got back to the ground on which you left us.
I should have retired at the end of the first four years, but that the
immense load of tory calumnies which have been manufactured respecting
me, and have filled the European market, have obliged me to appeal once
more to my country for a justification. I have no fear but that I shall
receive honor