The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FOREIGN RELATIONS / BRITAIN
I am of opinion that twenty-three thousand hogsheads of tobacco, the
annual consumption of' this country, do not exceed the amount of those
commodities which it is more advantageous to us to buy here than in
England, or elsewhere; and such a commerce would powerfully reinforce
the motives for a friendship from this country towards ours. 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 influence 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 They have not withdrawn their armies out of our country,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. I think we
should not have differed in the term necessary. We differed
essentially in the article of interest. For while the principal, and
interest preceding and subsequent to the war seem justly due from us,
that which accrued during the war does not. Interest is a compensation
for the use of money. Their money, in our hands, was in the form of
lands and negroes. Tobacco, the produce of these lands and negroes (or
as I may call it, the interest of them), being almost impossible of
conveyance to the markets of consumption, because taken by themselves
in its way there, sold during the war, at five or six shillings the
hundred. This did not pay taxes, and for tools and other plantation
charges. A man who should have attempted to remit to his creditor
tobacco, for either principal or interest, must have remitted it three
times before one cargo would have arrived safe; and this from the
depredations of their own nation, and often of the creditor himself;
for some of the merchants entered deeply into the privateering
business. The individuals, who did not, say they have lost this
interest; the debtor replies, that he has not gained it, and that it
is a case, where a Toss having been incurred, every one tries to shift
it from himself. The known bias of the human mind from motives of
interest should lessen the confidence of each party in the justice of
their reasoning; but it is difficult to say, which of them should make
the sacrifice, both of reason and interest. Our conferences were
intended as preparatory to some arrangement. It is uncertain how far
we should have been able to accommodate our opinions. But the absolute
aversion of the government to enter into any arrangement prevented the
object from being pursued. Each country is left to do justice to
itself and to the other, according to its own ideas, as to what is
past; and to scramble for the future, as well as they can; to regulate
their commerce by duties and prohibitions, and perhaps by cannons and
mortars; in which event, we must abandon the ocean, where we are weak,
leaving to neutral nations the carriage of our commodities; and
measure with them on land, where they alone can lose. Farewell, then,
all our useful improvements of canals and roads, reformations of laws,
and other rational employments.
to James Ross, 8 May 1786
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