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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO SECRETARY LIVINGSTON. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO SECRETARY LIVINGSTON.

Paris, 23 June, 1783.

Sir,—

The British nation and ministry are in a very unsettled state; they find themselves in a new situation, and have not digested any plan. Ireland is in a new situation; she is independent of parliament, and the English know not how to manage her. To what an extent she will claim a right of trading with the United States, is unknown. Canada, too, and Nova Scotia are in a new situation; the former, they say, must have a new government. But what form to give them, and, indeed, what kind of government they are capable of, or would be agreeable to them, is uncertain. Nothing is digested.

There is a party, composed probably of refugees, friends of the old hostile system, and fomented by emissaries of several foreign nations, who do not wish a cordial reconciliation and sincere friendship between Great Britain and the United States, who clamor for the conservation of the navigation act and the carrying trade. If these should succeed so far as to excite parliament or the ministry to adopt a contracted principle, to exclude us from the West India trade, and from trading with Canada and Nova Scotia, and from carrying freely in vessels belonging to any one of the thirteen States, the production of any other to Great Britain, the consequences may be to perplex us for a time, may bind us closer to France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Italy, and the northern nations, and thus be fatal to Great Britain, without being finally very hurtful to us.

The nations of Europe, who have islands in the West Indies, have at this moment a delicate part to take. Upon their present decisions, great things will depend. The commerce of the West India Islands is a part of the American system of commerce. They can neither do without us, nor we without them. The Creator has placed us upon the globe in such a situation, that we have occasion for each other. We have the means of assisting each other, and politicians and artful contrivances cannot separate us. Wise statesmen, like able artists of every kind, study nature, and their works are perfect in proportion as they conform to her laws. Obstinate attempts to prevent the islands and the continent, by force or policy, from deriving from each other those blessings which nature has enabled them to afford, will only put both to thinking of means of coming together. And an injudicious regulation at this time may lay a foundation for intimate combinations between the islands and the continent, which otherwise would not be wished for or thought of by either.

If the French, Dutch, and Danes have common sense, they will profit of any blunder Great Britain may commit upon this occasion. The ideas of the British cabinet and merchants at present are so confused upon all these subjects, that we can get them to agree to nothing. I still think that the best policy of the United States is, to send a minister to London to negotiate a treaty of commerce, instructed to conclude nothing, not the smallest article, until he has sent it to congress, and received their approbation. In the mean time, congress may admit any British or Irish ships that have arrived, or may arrive, to trade as they please.

For my own part, I confess I would not advise congress to bind themselves to any thing that is not reasonable and just. If we should agree to revive the trade upon the old footing, it is the utmost that can, with a color of justice or modesty, be requested of us. This is not equal, but might be borne. Rather than go further, and deny ourselves the freight from the West Indies to Europe, at least to Great Britain, especially rather than give away our own carrying trade, by agreeing that the ships of one State should not carry to Great Britain the produce of another, I would be for entering into still closer connections with France, Spain, and Holland, and purchase of them, at the expense of Great Britain, what she has not wisdom enough to allow us for her own good.

I have the honor to be, &c.

John Adams.