In policy, if not in
justice, they should be disposed to avoid oppression, which, falling on
us as well as on their colonies, might tempt us to act together.*
[* This paragraph was in cipher, but an explication of it
preserved with the copy.]
The element of measure adopted by the National Assembly excludes, _ipso
facto_, every nation on earth from a communion of measure with them; for
they acknowledge themselves, that a due portion for admeasurement of a
meridian crossing the forty-fifth degree of latitude, and terminating
at both ends in the same level, can be found in no country on earth but
theirs. It would follow then, that other nations must trust to their
admeasurement, or send persons into their country to make it themselves,
not only in the first instance, but whenever afterwards they may wish to
verify their measures. Instead of concurring, then, in a measure which,
like the pendulum, may be found in every point of the forty-fifth
degree, and through both hemispheres, and consequently in all the
countries of the earth lying under that parallel, either northern or
southern, they adopt one which can be found but in a single point of
the northern parallel, and consequently only in one country, and that
country is theirs.
I left with you a statement of the case of Schweighaeuser and Dobree,
with the original vouchers on which it depends.
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