Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/349

330 physical defence for its protection, the wisdom of Grotius and Bynkershoek could not prevent it from being plundered; and how could President Jefferson complain merely because American ships were forbidden by England to carry French sugars to France, when he looked on without a protest while England and France committed much greater outrages on every other country within their reach?

President Jefferson believed that the United States had ample means to resist any British pretension. As his letters to Paine and Logan showed, he felt that European Powers could be controlled through the interests of commerce. He was the more firmly convinced by the extraordinary concessions which Pitt had made, and by the steady encouragement he gave to the American merchant. Jefferson felt sure that England could not afford to sacrifice a trade of some forty million dollars, and that her colonies could not exist without access to the American market. What need to spend millions on a navy, when Congress, as Jefferson believed, already grasped England by the throat, and could suffocate her by a mere turn of the wrist?

This reasoning had much in its favor. To Pitt the value of the American trade at a time of war with France and Spain was immense; and when taken in connection with the dependence of the West Indian colonies on America, it made a combination of British interests centring in the United States which