The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2 - Online Library of ...

Online Library of Liberty: The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2
Spaniards and Portuguese will carry their arms into France is doubtful, for although
sound policy would pursue that course, the weakness which some folks call prudence
may dictate a different idea. The American friends of Bonaparte look on with anxious
terror. May it, like that of the Russian campaign, tend to their confusion.”
“Accept my thanks for your King’s speech to both Houses,” Mr. Morris wrote to the
Honorable Lewis B. Sturges, December 17th, 1813. “A more extraordinary thing of
the sort I never saw nor heard of. It begins by telling you that he sent negotiators to
treat under a mediation which the enemy had not accepted of, but which he took it for
granted they would accept of because the rights and pretensions of neither party were
to be submitted to the mediator’s decision. On what, then, are the parties at bloody
issue? Living in my chimney-corner, the buzz of political speculations by those who
‘ropes of sand can twist’ seldom reaches my ears, and never affects those dictates of
plain common-sense which I prefer to nice distinctions. As I never had a doubt, so I
thought it a duty to express my conviction that British ministers would not, dared not,
submit to mediation a question of essential right; that in such questions one party or
the other must give up the point, and that on the present occasion the American
Government must submit to that humiliating condition. I did not then believe, neither
do I now believe, that the Emperor offered his mediation, but that it was solicited by
our administration. I did believe, and do believe, that they had neither the expectation,
the hope, nor even the wish that it should produce peace. It appeared to me a mere
stock-jobbing trick, and such it will, I am persuaded, turn out. But in every point of
view the nation is openly and deeply disgraced. I pretend not to know, nor will I waste
a conjecture on, the objects or motives which are concealed, but, assuming facts of
public notoriety, it is clear and cannot be contradicted that war was declared with
petulant precipitation, prosecuted with prodigal extravagance, and conducted with
egregious folly; that the President, after rejecting an armistice, repeatedly proffered,
sent a brace of agents to beg, in the northeastern corner of Europe, that peace which
he might have had in five minutes without crossing the threshold of his palace. Can
anyone be surprised that Bonaparte should, under such circumstances, direct his man
Serrurier to insult him? Whatever may be the Emperor’s faults, he has the feelings of
a soldier. It becomes him, therefore, to tell us, ‘If you mean war fight fairly, if you
mean peace seek it frankly, but out upon this half-faced fellowship.’
“I beg pardon, my dear sir, for making any remarks on this inconceivably debasing
act. If I were not persuaded that, by a speedy separation of the States, the loathsome
burden of ignominy will be cast from our shoulders, I should be deeply mortified; as it
is, I am rather amused by the mixture of—fill the blank with anything but wisdom and
truth.”
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