of a nation situated like our own. It can hardly be pretended,
that the "right" for which we ask ought to be purchased at the
disgraceful price of abandoning the truth. This would be truly
bargaining away a better right for another of less value. These
gentlemen of expedients may beat their brains as much as they please,
they will never invent any means so simple, and so sure of attaining the
great ends included in the political maxim just quoted, as by adhering
to the plain, direct dictates of common honesty. Each trifling temporary
advantage they may gain, will certainly and speedily be met by some
contingent disadvantage, that will render them losers by the
exchange.[27]

[Footnote 27: As respects France, the result has shown the impolicy of
the temporizing system. The French Government, finding such a
disposition to compliance in the agents that were placed near it, by
America, has quite reasonably inferred that the mass at home acted on
the same temporizing and selfish policy, and has treated a solemn
compact, that contains a tardy and very insufficient reparation, for
some of the greatest outrages that were ever committed by one civilized
nation on the rights of another, as a matter quite within its own
control. This consequence was foreseen by the writer, and foretold, in a
letter that was written in 1832, and published as far back as the year
1833. It was only necessary to be on the spot, and to witness the
contempt and indifference engendered by this miserable policy, to
predict the events which have since occurred. The accidental situation
of Europe has favoured us, and we owe the tardy reparation that has been
received more to Russia than to ourselves.]

To return to France and the controversy on finance, our opponents had at
length the indiscretion to publish a document that they said had been
furnished them by some of their "_honorables Americains_" and by which
they attempted to prove some one of their various positions; for by this
time they had taken a great many, scarcely any two of which agreed. I
have no doubt that this document, in the present instance, did come from
"Americans," though it originally came from Captain Basil Hall. This
gentleman had appended to his travels, a table, which purported to
contain an arranged statement of the cost of the state governments. You
will form some idea of the value of this table, as a political and
statistical document, by an exposure of one or two of its more