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.

At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of