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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
Ch. 17.
enemy. The instructions to Monroe rested on this idea; and that no doubt might remain, Jefferson wrote to Monroe a private letter which expressed the doctrine in set terms.
- "No two countries upon earth," said the President,[1] "have so many points of common interest and friendship; and their rulers must be great bunglers indeed if with such dispositions they break them asunder. The only rivalry that can arise is on the ocean. England may by petty-larceny thwartings check us on that element a little; but nothing she can do will retard us there one year's growth. We shall be supported there by other nations, and thrown into their scale to make a part of the great counterpoise to her navy. If, on the other hand, she is just to us, conciliatory, and encourages the sentiment of family feelings and conduct, it cannot fail to befriend the security of both. We have the seamen and materials for fifty ships of the line and half that number of frigates; and were France to give us the money and England the dispositions to equip them, they would give to England serious proofs of the stock from which they are sprung and the school in which they have been taught, and added to the efforts of the immensity of sea-coast lately united under one Power would leave the state of the ocean no longer problematical. Were, on the other hand, England to give the money and France the dispositions to place us on the sea in all our force, the whole world, out of the continent of Europe, might be our joint monopoly. We wish for neither of these scenes. We ask for peace and justice from all nations, and we will remain uprightly neutral in fact."
- ↑ Jefferson to Monroe, May 4, 1806; Works, v. 12.
