they are, by sincere wishes for our success, I am afraid they begin to see more clearly that in a state of war we are effectually fighting their battles, without the necessity of their active interference; and they recur once more to the flattering prospect of peace and a lucrative neutrality."
In this state of doubt President Jefferson continued his intimate relations with Thornton.
- "He expressed himself very freely," wrote Thornton, May 30, 1803, "on the contemptible and frivolous conduct, as he termed it, of a Government that could alter its language so entirely on the prospect of an approaching rupture with another nation,—which he acknowledged instantly, on my mention of it, had been the case toward Mr. Livingston."
Jefferson attributed Bonaparte's returning courtesy to fear rather than to foresight. Thornton himself began to feel the danger that Bonaparte, after all, might outwit him. He revised his opinion about Louisiana. England, he saw, had the strongest motives for wishing France to keep that province.
- "The most desirable state of things," he wrote, "seems to be that France should become mistress of Louisiana, because her influence in the United States would be by that event lost forever, and she could only be dispossessed by a concert between Great Britain and America in a common cause, which would produce an indissoluble bond of union and amity between the two countries."
This cordiality between England and the United States lasted without interruption until midsummer.
