Note 7 — LETTER XXI. TO RICHARD COOPER, ESQUIRE, COOPERSTOWN.

It is not yet ten years, since this opinion was given. Were the money that the United States this year distributes among the several states, as returned revenue, (near 8,000,000 sterling,) appropriated to a navy, it would build and keep at sea for a twelvemonth, fifty sail of the line. It is “too bad” that a nation, with such means, should be so much under the dominion of a false feeling, as to allow another people to occupy an island like Bermuda, at its threshold, with no other view than to its own annoyance. The internal legislation of this country is practically among the best in the world, while its foreign interests seem to be conducted pretty much on the Mahometan doctrine of fatalism.