As to anything
of real value, we had nothing under heaven to offer, (for which we were
not ourselves in a very dubious struggle,) except the island of
Martinico only. When this object was to be weighed against the
Directorial conquests, merely as an object of a value at market, the
principle of barter became perfectly ridiculous: a single quarter in the
single city of Amsterdam was worth ten Martinicos, and would have sold
for many more years' purchase in any market overt in Europe. How was
this gross and glaring defect in the objects of exchange to be supplied?
It was to be made up by argument. And what was that argument? The
extreme utility of possessions in the West Indies to the augmentation of
the naval power of France. A very curious topic of argument to be
proposed and insisted on by an ambassador of Great Britain! It is
directly and plainly this:--"Come, we know that of all things you wish a
naval power, and it is natural you should, who wish to destroy the very
sources of the British greatness, to overpower our marine, to destroy
our commerce, to eradicate our foreign influence, and to lay us open to
an invasion, which at one stroke may complete our servitude and ruin and
expunge us from among the nations of the earth. Here I have it in my
budget, the infallible arcanum for that purpose. You are but novices in
the art of naval resources. Let you have the West Indies back, and your
maritime preponderance is secured, for which you would do well to be
moderate in your demands upon the Austrian Netherlands.
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