This friendship we ought to cultivate closely, considering the present
dispositions of England towards us.
I am lately returned from a visit to that country. The spirit of
hostility to us has always existed in the mind of the King, but it
has now extended itself through the whole mass of the people, and the
majority in the public councils. In a country, where the voice of the
people influences so much the measures of administration, and where it
coincides with the private temper of the King, there is no pronouncing
on future events. It is true, they have nothing to gain, and much to
lose, by a war with us. But interest is not the strongest passion in the
human breast. There are difficult points, too, still unsettled between
us. They have not withdrawn their armies out of our country, nor given
satisfaction for the property they brought off. On our part, we have not
paid our debts, and it will take time to pay them. In conferences with
some distinguished mercantile characters, I found them sensible of the
impossibility of our paying these debts at once, and that an endeavor
to force universal and immediate payment, would render debts desperate,
which are good in themselves.
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