Loading ...WHEN Morris took office, he had eager hopes of loans from Spain. In July, 1781, he wrote a long letter to Jay to stimulate him to apply for such loan, and to provide him with arguments by which he might persuade the Spanish Minister. He proposed that the United States should help Spain to conquer Florida, the Bahamas, and perhaps Jamaica. Then he suggested that Nova Scotia might be conquered, thus depriving Great Britain of ship timber, and obtaining a cheap supply of it for Spain. This would destroy the fisheries of Great Britain, on which she relied as a ” nursery for seamen.” England could be driven out of the Gulf of Mexico, and Spain could open a port in East Florida for trade with the United States. He wanted a loan of five million dollars. If more could be got, more could be done. The United States ” do not mean to beg gratuities, but to make rational requests.”
The Financier and the In a republic, time is sure to be lost before a revenue can be established. He cannot even reform the expenditure without money, because he cannot make contracts, and the people resent taxes while they see the administration loose and wasteful. Paper money has been used too much ; hence loans are necessary. He was trying to provide Jay with answers to the reproach that the Americans would not pay taxes, and to the question why they did not tax rather than borrow.
In his eagerness to get resources, Morris even suggested that a loan might be obtained of Portugal. ” No chance ought to be neglected.”
Jay thought Morris’s despatch so good a plea that he had it translated and submitted in full to the Spanish Minister. The latter thought that Morris’s requests were very serious, and called for mature consideration. In fact, the despatch contained American arguments and American ideas of what motives ought to influence Spain ; but it did not contain any offer to Spain which could really act as an inducement to her. General arguments about the advancement of the purposes of the alliance and about weakening England, although not foreign to her interests and wishes, did not call out her zeal. She wanted Gibraltar, she wanted to close the Mississippi, and she wanted to secure the Gulf of Mexico as a Spanish sea. She wanted to hear some proposition which would bear upon these definite desires……
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