will trade, there shall be rules, so that they shall not break your laws or our laws. Our Minister Caleb Cushing is authorized to make a treaty to regulate trade. Let it be just. Let there be no unfair advantage on either side. Let the people trade not only at Canton, but also at Amoy, Ningpo, Shanghai, Foochow, and all other such places as may offer profitable exchanges both to China and the United States, provided they do not break your laws or our laws. We shall not take the part of evil-doers, We shall not uphold them that break your laws, Therefore, we doubt not that you will be pleased that our messenger of peace with this letter in his hand shall come to Peking and there deliver it; and that your great officers will by your order make a treaty with him not to disturb the peace between China and America. Let the treaty be signed by your own imperial hand, It shall be signed by mine, and by the authorities of our great council, the Senate.
'And so may your health be good, and may peace reign. Written at Washington, this twelfth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-three. Your good friend, [Seal].'Among subordinate traits and qualities we may especially mention irony—a dangerous weapon in politics, whether we think of it as the ironical rudeness of a Bismarck[1] in his Circular
- ↑ Bismarck would, however, advise for a general rule: 'Be polite but without irony. Write diplomatically. Even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.'—Busch, Bismarck, i. 246. 'Be civil to the very last step of the gallows, but hang all the same.'—Ibid., i. 321. Such expressions of opinion are, at least, of interest as coming from the
but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less than the English merchant, and his purpose is accomplished.'—De la Démocratie en Amérique, translated by Reeve, with Preface and Notes by Spence, 1838 (New York), 404. Tocqueville concluded the chapter with a forecast of the maritime supremacy of the Anglo-Americans. 'When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the globe.'—Ibid., 408.
