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86 Orleans. So much for the rule of reason. His intimidation was conveyed in another document, by no means either naïve or ludicrous. It said:

"If the French Government, instead of friendly arrangements or views, should be found to meditate hostilities, or to have formed projects, which will constrain the United States to resort to hostilities, such communications are then to be held with the British Government, as will sound its dispositions and invite its concurrence in the war. * * *"

A later dispatch of Jefferson's shows that the eternal struggle against despotism is not new, and that it is no novelty to find the Anglo-Saxon shoulder to shoulder with America in the cause:

"From the moment that France takes possession of New Orleans * * we must marry ourselves to the British Fleet and Nation. We must turn all our attention to a maritime force, * * and having formed and connected together with a power which may render