[clxii. 248]

1821 Jan y 21

Rid Yourselves

Dispositions /friendly and submissive dispositions/ these you will see are all the fruit that during the golden period under the supposition it is in the nature of the case that the Union should produce: of more substantial taxation, nothing: no acts: no dollars. The period concluded even these dispositions will have vanished. But to prove to you that under the Code it is not in the nature of the case that after the period any such disposition should remain may be referred to the next succeeding head.

Under the present head it may not be improper to beg your attention to the sources - to all the imaginable sources from which /source in all of them/ supposing contributions to come they would have to come. Nor does it appear to me that as the sources come successively under your view the observation /remarks/ should in any instance fail to present itself to you - No:- this will not do: nothing is to be expected from hence.

Guerilla defiance excepted, to speak of strength - a country's strength - is in other words to speak of the sinews of war - in a word of money. Should it then turn out that even during the golden age not a [...?] dollar perhaps not so much as a dollar subject to deductions has found its way into your treasury from Ultramaria - what from that source will have been the addition to your strength? Oh yes: if instead of strength the thing enquired of be weakness: weakness in abundance, if either vulnerability encrease of vulnerable points, or diminution of means of remedy by weakness.