This will be a duplication in twenty three
or twenty-four years. If we can delay but for a few years the necessity
of vindicating the laws of nature on the ocean, we shall be the more
sure of doing it with effect. The day is within my time as well as
yours, when we may say by what laws other nations shall treat us on the
sea. And we will say it. In the meantime, we wish to let every treaty
we have drop off without renewal. We call in our diplomatic missions,
barely keeping up those to the most important nations. There is a
strong disposition in our countrymen to discontinue even these; and
very possibly it may be done. Consuls will be continued as usual. The
interest which European nations feel, as well as ourselves, in the
mutual patronage of commercial intercourse, is a sufficient stimulus
on both sides to insure that patronage. A treaty, contrary to that
interest, renders war necessary to get rid of it.
I send this by Chancellor Livingston, named to the Senate the day after
I came into office, as our Minister Plenipotentiary to France. I have
taken care to impress him with the value of your society. You will find
him an able and honorable man; unfortunately, so deaf that he will have
to transact all his business by writing. You will have known long ago,
that Mr.
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