t of your late visit to our
neighborhood. The loss, indeed, was all my own; for in these short
interviews with you. I generally get my political compass rectified,
learn from you whereabouts we are, and correct my course again. In
exchange for this, I can give you but newspaper ideas, and little indeed
of these, for I read but a single paper, and that hastily. I find Horace
and Tacitus so much better writers than the champions of the gazettes,
that I lay those down, to take up these, with great reluctance. And on
the question you propose, whether we can, in any form, take a bolder
attitude than formerly in favor of liberty, I can give you but
commonplace ideas. They will be but the widow's mite, and offered only
because requested. The matter which now embroils Europe, the presumption
of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government, is so
arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation, as well as moral sentiment,
enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one, and our
equal execrations against the other. I do not know, indeed, whether all
nations do not owe to one another a bold and open declaration of their
sympathies with the one party, and their detestation of the conduct of
the other. But farther than this we are not bound to go; and indeed, for
the sake of the world, we ought not to increase the jealousies, or draw
on ourselves the power, of this formidable confederacy. I have ever
deemed it fundamental for the United States, never to take active
part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely
distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power,
their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government,
are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their
energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and
lives of their people. On our part, never had a people so favorable
a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fraternity with
mankind, and the direction of all our means and faculties to the
purposes of improvement instead of destruction. With Europe we have
few occasions of collision, and these, with a little prudence and
forbearance, may be generally accommodated. Of the brethren of our own
hemisphere, none are yet, or for an age to come will be, in a shape,
condition, or disposition to war against us. And the foothold, which the
nations of Europe had in either America, is slipping from under them,
so