on the spot.  They complain of our tonnage duty, but it is because it is not understood.  In the ports of France, we pay fees for anchorage, buoys, and beacons, fees to measurers, weighers, and guagers, and in some countries, for light-houses.  We have thought it better that the public here should pay all these, and reimburse itself by a consolidation of them into one fee, proportioned to the tonnage of the vessel, and therefore called by that name.  They complain that the foreign tonnage is higher than the domestic.  If this complaint had come from the English, it would not have been wonderful, because the foreign tonnage operates really as a tax on their commerce, which, under this name, is found to pay sixteen dollars and fifty cents for every dollar paid by France.  It was not conceived, that the latter would have complained of a measure calculated to operate so unequally on her rival, and I still suppose she would not complain, if the thing were well understood.  The refusing to our vessels the faculty of becoming national bottoms, on sale to their citizens, was never before done by any nation but England.  I cannot help hoping that these were wanderings of a moment, founded in misinformation, which reflection will have corrected before you receive this.

Whenever jealousies are expressed as to any supposed views of ours, on the dominion of the West Indies, you cannot go farther than the truth, in asserting we have none.  If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is, that we should have nothing to do with conquest.  As to commerce, indeed, we have strong sensations.  In casting our eyes over the earth, we see no instance of a nation forbidden, as we are, by foreign powers, to deal with neighbors, and obliged, with them, to carry into another hemisphere, the mutual supplies necessary to relieve mutual wants.  This is not merely a question between the foreign power and our neighbor.  We are interested in it equally with the latter, and nothing but moderation, at least with respect to us, can render us indifferent to its continuance.  An exchange of surpluses and wants between neighbor nations is both a right and a duty under the moral law, and measures against right should be mollified in their exercise, if it be wished to lengthen them to the greatest term possible.  Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.  It would seem that the one now spoken of would need only a mention, to be assented to by any unprejudiced mind:  but with respect to America, Europeans in general have been too long in the habit of confounding force with right.  The Marquis de la Fayette stands in such a relation between the two countries, that I should think him perfectly capable of seeing what is just as to both.  Perhaps on some occasion of free conversation, you might find an opportunity of impressing these truths on his mind, and that from him they might be let out at a proper moment as matters meriting consideration and weight, when they shall be engaged in the work of forming a constitution for our neighbors.  In policy, if not in justice, they should be disposed to avoid oppression, which, falling on us as well as on their colonies, might tempt us to act together.*