The events of Europe come to us so late, and so suspiciously, that
observations on them would certainly be stale, and possibly wide of
their actual state. From their general aspect, however, I collect
that your Majesty's interposition in them has been disinterested and
generous, and having in view only the general good of the great
European family. When you shall proceed to the pacification which is to
re-establish peace and commerce, the same dispositions of mind will lead
you to think of the general intercourse of nations, and to make that
provision for its future maintenance, which, in times past, it has so
much needed. The northern nations of Europe, at the head of which your
Majesty is distinguished, are habitually peaceable. The United States
of America, like them, are attached to peace. We have then with them
a common interest in the neutral rights. Every nation, indeed, on the
continent of Europe, belligerent as well as neutral, is interested in
maintaining these rights, in liberalizing them progressively with the
progress of science and refinement of morality, and in relieving
them from restrictions which the extension of the arts has long since
rendered unreasonable and vexatious.

Two personages in Europe, of which your Majesty is one, have it in their
power, at the approaching pacification, to render eminent service to
nations in general, by incorporating into the act of pacification, a
correct definition of the rights of neutrals on the high seas. Such
a definition, declared by all the powers lately or still belligerent,
would give to those rights a precision and notoriety, and cover them
with an authority, which would protect them in an important degree
against future violation; and should any further sanction be necessary,
that of an exclusion of the violating nation from commercial intercourse
with all the others, would be preferred to war, as more analogous to