It is an erect
countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of
resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and
honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind. Therefore all these
negotiations, and all the declarations with which they were preceded and
followed, can only serve to raise presumptions against that good faith
and public integrity the fame of which to preserve inviolate is so much
the interest and duty of every nation.
The pledge is an engagement "to all Europe." This is the more
extraordinary, because it is a pledge which no power in Europe, whom I
have yet heard of, has thought proper to require at our hands. I am not
in the secrets of office, and therefore I may be excused for proceeding
upon probabilities and exterior indications. I have surveyed all Europe
from the east to the west, from the north to the south, in search of
this call upon us to purge ourselves of "subtle _duplicity_ and a
_Punic_ style" in our proceedings. I have not heard that his Excellency
the Ottoman ambassador has expressed his doubts of the British sincerity
in our negotiation with the most unchristian republic lately set up at
our door. What sympathy in that quarter may have introduced a
remonstrance upon the want of faith in this nation I cannot positively
say. If it exists, it is in Turkish or Arabic, and possibly is not yet
translated. But none of the nations which compose the old Christian
world have I yet heard as calling upon us for those judicial purgations
and ordeals, by fire and water, which we have chosen to go through;--for
the other great proof, by battle, we seem to decline.
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