No nation can subscribe to such pretensions; no
nation can agree, at the mere will or interest of another, to have its
peaceable industry suspended, and its citizens reduced to idleness and
Want. The loss of our produce destined for foreign markets, or that loss
which would result from an arbitrary restraint of our 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.
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