nt of what was then going on in Europe respecting Neutral
Commerce.

The Case was, that in order to compel the English Government to
acknowledge the rights of Neutral Commerce, and that free Ships make
free Goods, the _Emperor Paul_, in the month of September following the
publication of the plan, shut all the Ports of Russia against England.
Sweden and Denmark did the same by their Ports, and Denmark shut up
Hamburgh. Prussia shut up the Elbe and the Weser. The ports of Spain,
Portugal, and Naples were shut up, and, in general, all the ports of
Italy, except Venice, which the Emperor of Germany held; and had it not
been for the untimely death of Paul, a _Law of Nations_, founded on the
authority of Nations, for establishing the rights of Neutral Commerce
and the freedom of the Seas, would have been proclaimed, and the
Government of England must have consented to that Law, or the Nation
must have lost its Commerce; and the consequence to America would have
been, that such a Law would, in a great measure if not entirely, have
released her from the injuries of Jay's Treaty.

Of all these matters I informed Mr. Jefferson. This was before he was
President, and the Letter he wrote me after he was President was in
answer to those I had written to him and the manuscript Copy of the plan
I had sent here. Here follows the Letter:

Washington, March 18, 1801. Dear Sir:

Your letters of Oct. 1st, 4th, 6th, 16th, came duly to hand, and the
papers which they covered were, according to your permission, published
in the Newspapers, and in a Pamphlet, and under your own name. These
papers contain precisely our principles, and I hope they will be
generally recognized here. _Determined as we are to avoid, if possible,
wasting the energies of our People in war and destruction, we shall
avoid implicating ourselves with the Powers of Europe, even in support
of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other Interests
different from ours that we must avoid being entangled in them. We
believe we can enforce those principles as to ourselves by Peaceable
means, now that we are likely to have our Public Councils detached from
foreign views. The return of our citizens from the phrenzy into which
they had been wrought, partly by ill conduct in France, partly by
artifices practiced upon them, is almost extinct, and will, I believe,
become quite so_, But these details, too minute and long for a Letter,
will be better developed by M