“There was no probability that any arguments of mine could make any impression upon opinions thus toned. She listened, however, with as much complacency as could be expected to what I said and finally asked me why I had not been to see her before. I answered that her high reputation was calculated to inspire respect no less than curiosity and that however desirous I had been of becoming personally acquainted with her I had thought I could not without indiscretion intrude myself upon her Society. The reason appeared to please her. She said she was to leave this city the next day at noon. She was going to Stockholm to pass the winter and then to England. She wished to have another conversation with me before she went and asked me to call on her the next morning.
“I readily accepted the invitation and we discussed politics again two or three hours. I found her better conversant with Rhetoric than with Logic. She had much to say about social order, much about universal monarchy, much about the preservation of religion in which she gave me to understand she did not herself believe, and much about the ambition and supremacy of Buonaparte upon which she soon discovered there was no difference of sentiment between us. But why did not America join in the holy cause against the tyrant? First because America had no means of making war against him, she could neither attack him by sea or land. 2d because it was a fundamental maxim of American policy never to intermeddle with the political affairs of Europe. Thirdly because it was altogether unnecessary. He had enemies enough upon his hands already. What! Did not I dread his universal monarchy? Not in the least. I saw indeed a very formidable mass of force arrayed under him, but I saw a mass of force at least as formidable arrayed against him. Europe contained about 100 millions of human beings. He was wielding the means of 15 millions and the means of 85 millions were wielding against him. It was an awful spectacle to behold the shock, but I did not believe nor ever had believed that he would ever be able to subjugate even the continent of Europe. If there had ever been any real danger of such an event it was passed.
“She herself saw that there was every prospect of his being very shortly driven out of Spain. And I was equally convinced he would be driven out of Russia. It was the very day of the battle of Borodino. ‘J’en accepte l’augure,’ she said. ‘Everything that you say of him is very just. But I have particular reason for resentment against him. I have been persecuted by him in the most shameful manner. I was neither suffered to live anywhere nor to go where I would have gone, all for no other reason but because I would not eulogize him in my writings.’ As to our war with England I told her that I deeply lamented it and yet cherished the hope that it would not last long. That England had forced it upon us by measures as outrageous upon the rights of an independent nation as tyrannical as oppressive as any that could be charged upon Buonaparte. Her pretences were retaliation and necessity. Retaliation upon America for the wrongs of France and necessity for man Stealing. We asked of England nothing but our indisputable rights, but we allowed no special prerogatives to political Quixotism. We did not consider Britain at all as the defender of the liberties of mankind but as another Tyrant pretending to exclusive dominion upon the ocean. A pretension full as detestable and I trusted in God full as chimerical as the pretension of universal monarchy upon the land.