1823 Jan¼y 28 Trip. H. to Q.A ?.7. U.S. inducements

1. In the first place comes ”Securityes against North African Piracy•. From no

other source could any thing like a perpetual and entire an entire, or in

perpetuity so much as a partial security for you against this plague be derived

to you. To day the States in question leave you all of them unmolested, but

tomorrow the molestation may by any or all of them be renewed. To day, you have

treaties with them: but tomorrow those treaties may, any or all of them, be

formally broken off or violated. Under governments such as ours, in a state of

society and manners such as ours, the whole wisdom of years may at any time be

set at nought, by the caprice or ungrounded passion of the moment passion Sir

grounded on false information © or even destitute of all ground. Upon this topic

I see no need of enlarging. Though on your minds, in your situation, the idea of

this irritability with its consequences can not be so strongly impressed by

observation from a distance as on ours it is by sad and continual experience, it

is not without some assurance that I expect to find it sufficiently so for the

purpose.

True it is that on your part no such security can be compleat unless and untill

the plan has been accomplished in regard to all the States in question: more

particularly in regard to ”Algiers• that being beyond comparison the most

formidable. But the plan, you see, embraces them all, and every thing must have

its beginning. Neither were it to stop at Tripoli, would a perpetual security

from the hostility of that State be at all times a matter of indifference to

you. At any rate it was not in the year 1804