He ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies. That he would give us the Floridas to withhold intercourse with the residue of those colonies cannot be doubted. But that is no price, because they are ours in the first moment of the first war, and until a war, they are of no particular necessity to us. But, altho' with difficulty, he will consent to our receiving Cuba into our union to prevent our aid to Mexico and other provinces. That would be a price, and I would immediately erect a column on the Southernmost limit of Cuba and inscribe on it a Ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. We should then have only to include the North in our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self government.