aphs remained as they
are here printed.)

this occasion. We see how, upon the result of the debate in which we are
engaged, a war may ensue between the United States and one, two, or even
more European nations. War in any case is as exceptionable from the habits
as it is revolting from the sentiments of the American people. But if
it come, it will be fully seen that it results from the action of Great
Britain, not our own; that Great Britain will have decided to fraternize
with our domestic enemy, either without waiting to hear from you our
remonstrances and our warnings, or after having heard them. War in defense
of national life is not immoral, and war in defense of independence is an
inevitable part of the discipline of nations.

The dispute will be between the European and the American branches of the
British race. All who belong to that race will especially deprecate it,
as they ought. It may well be believed that men of every race and kindred
will deplore it. A war not unlike it between the same parties occurred at
the close of the last century. Europe atoned by forty years of suffering
for the error that Great Britain committed in provoking that contest. If
that nation shall now repeat the same great error, the social convulsions
which will follow may not be so long, but they will be more general. When
they shall have ceased, it will, we think, be seen, whatever may have been
the fortunes of other nations, that it is not the United States that
will have come out of them with its precious Constitution altered or its
honestly obtained dominion in any degree abridged. Great Britain has but
to wait a few months and all her present inconveniences will cease with
all our own troubles. If she take a different course, she will calculate
for herself the ultimate as well as the immediate consequences, and will
consider what position she will hold when she shall have forever lost the
sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and
affections she has a natural claim. In making that calculation she will do
well to remember that in the controversy she proposes to open we shall be
actuated by neither pride, nor passion, nor cupidity, nor ambition; but
we shall stand simply on the principle of self-preservation, and that our
cause will involve the independence of nations and the rights of human
nature.

I am, Sir, respectfully your obedient servant, W. H. S.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq., etc,