markets, is a tax
too serious for us to acquiesce in. It is not enough for a nation
to say, we and our friends will buy your produce. We have a right to
answer, that it suits us better to sell to their enemies as well as
their friends. Our ships do not go to France to return empty. They go to
exchange the surplus of one produce which we can spare, for surplusses
of other kinds which they can spare and we want; which they can furnish
on better terms, and more to our mind, than Great Britain or her
friends. We have a right to judge for ourselves what market best suits
us, and they have none to forbid to us the enjoyment of the necessaries
and comforts which we may obtain from any other independent country.

This act, too, tends directly to draw us from that state of peace
in which we are wishing to remain. It is an essential character of
neutrality to furnish no aids (not stipulated by treaty) to one party,
which we are not equally ready to furnish to the other. If we permit
corn to be sent to Great Britain and her friends, we are equally bound
to permit it to France. To restrain it would be a partiality which
might lead to war with France; and between restraining it ourselves, and
permitting her enemies to restrain it unrightfully, is no difference.
She would consider this as a mere pretext, of which she would not be the
dupe; and on what honorable ground could we otherwise explain it?
Thus we should see ourselves plunged by this unauthorized act of Great
Britain into a war with which we meddle not, and which we wish to avoid,
if justice to all parties and from all parties will enable us to avoid
it. In the case where we found ourselves obliged by treaty to withhold
from the enemies of France the right of arming in our ports, we thought
ourselves in justice bound to withhold the same right from France also,
and we did it. Were we to withhold from her supplies of provisions, we
should in like manner be bound to withhold them from her enemies also;
and thus shut to ourselves all the ports of Europe where corn is in
demand, or make ourselves parties in the war. This is a dilemma which
Great Britain has no right to force upon us, and for which no pretext
can be found in any part of our conduct. She may indeed feel the desire
of starving an enemy nation: but she can have no right of doing it at
our loss, nor of making us the instruments of it.

The President therefore desires, that you will immediately enter into
explanatio