nd owing great debts. These will be falling due by
instalments for fifteen years to come, and require from us the practice
of a rigorous economy to accomplish their payment: and it is our
principle to pay to a moment whatever we have engaged, and never
to engage what we cannot, and mean not, faithfully to pay. We have
calculated our resources, and find the sum to be moderate which they
would enable us to pay, and we know from late trials that little can be
added to it by borrowing. The country, too, which we wish to purchase,
except the portion already granted, and which must be confirmed to the
private holders, is a barren sand, six hundred miles from east to west
and from thirty to forty and fifty miles from north to south, formed by
deposition of the sands by the Gulf Stream in its circular course round
the Mexican Gulf, and which being spent after performing a semicircle,
has made from its last depositions the sand-bank of East Florida. In
West Florida, indeed, there are on the borders of the rivers some rich
bottoms, formed by the mud brought from the upper country. These bottoms
are all possessed by individuals. But the spaces between river and river
are mere banks of sand: and in East Florida, there are neither rivers
nor consequently any bottoms. We cannot then make any thing by a sale
of the lands to individuals. So that it is peace alone which makes it an
object with us, and which ought to make the cession of it desirable to
France. Whatever power, other than ourselves, holds the country east of
the Mississippi, becomes our natural enemy. Will such a possession do
France as much good, as such an enemy may do her harm? And how long
would it be hers, were such an enemy, situated at its door, added to
Great Britain? I confess, it appears to me as essential to France to
keep at peace with us, as it is to us to keep at peace with her: and
that, if this cannot be secured without some compromise as to the
territory in question, it will be useful for both to make sacrifices to
effect the compromise.

You see, my good friend, with what frankness I communicate with you on
this subject; that I hide nothing from you, and that I am endeavoring to
turn our private friendship to the good of our respective countries.
And can private friendship ever answer a nobler end than by keeping two
nations at peace, who, if this new position which one of them is taking
were rendered innocent, have more points of common interest, and fewe