From these causes we have ever looked to her as
our natural friend, as one with which we never could have an occasion of
difference. Her growth, therefore, we viewed as our own, her misfortunes
ours. There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is
our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the
produce of three eighths of our territory must pass to market, and
from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole
produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. France, placing
herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain
might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her
feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that
her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would
not, perhaps, be very long before some circumstances might arise, which
might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth
to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France: the impetuosity
of her temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in
a point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which, though
quiet and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded,
despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising
and energetic as any nation on earth; these circumstances render it
impossible that France and the United States can continue long friends,
when they meet in so irritable a position.
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