make the basis, but a part of the superstructure, of the fabric of pacification.  The order of things would thus be reversed.  The mutual disposition to peace would form the reasonable base, upon which the scheme of compensation upon one side or the other might be constructed.  This truly fundamental base being once laid, all differences arising from the spirit of huckstering and barter might be easily adjusted.  If the restoration of peace, with a view to the establishment of a fair balance of power in Europe, had been made the real basis of the treaty, the reciprocal value of the compensations could not be estimated according to their proportion to each other, but according to their proportionate relation to that end:  to that great end the whole would be subservient.  The effect of the treaty would be in a manner secured before the detail of particulars was begun, and for a plain reason,—­because the hostile spirit on both sides had been conjured down; but if, in the full fury and unappeased rancor of war, a little traffic is attempted, it is easy to divine what must be the consequence to those who endeavor to open that kind of petty commerce.

To illustrate what I have said, I go back no further than to the two last Treaties of Paris, and to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which preceded the first of these two Treaties of Paris by about fourteen or fifteen years.  I do not mean here to criticize any of them.  My opinions upon some particulars of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 are published in a pamphlet[39] which your recollection will readily bring into your view.  I recur to them only to show that their basis had not been, and never could have been, a mere dealing of truck and barter, but that the parties being willing, from common fatigue or common suffering, to put an end to a war the first object of which had either been obtained or despaired of, the lesser objects were not thought worth the price of further contest.  The parties understanding one another, so much was given away without considering from whose budget it came, not as the value of the objects, but as the value of peace to the parties might require.

At the last Treaty of Paris, the subjugation of America being despaired of on the part of Great Britain, and the independence of America being looked upon as secure on the part of France, the main cause of the war was removed; and then the conquests which France had made upon us (for we had made none of importance upon her) were surrendered with sufficient facility.  Peace was restored as peace.  In America the parties stood as they were possessed.  A limit was to be settled, but settled as a limit to secure that peace, and not at all on a system of equivalents, for which, as we then stood with the United States, there were little or no materials.