PAPERS

RELATIVE TO THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES WITH THE BARBARY POWERS, ́ACCOMPANYING A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. DECEMBER 22, 1801.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE,

AND OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

I NOW enclose sundry documents supplementary to those communicated to you with my message at the commencement of the session. Two others of considerable importance, the one relating to our transactions with the Barbary powers, the other presenting a view of the offices of the government, shall be communicated as soon as they ean be completed. TH: JEFFERSON.

TRANSLATION.

The Bashaw of Tunis, to Mr. John Adams, President of the United States of America.

MR. PRESIDENT,

ALTHOUGH I have charged the worthy and zealous consul of your nation, the Sieur William Eaton, to acquaint you with a proposition, which I have found myself under the absolute necessity of making to him, I have nevertheless determined to apply directly to you about it by these presents, in order that I might at the same time procure for myself the pleasure of reiterating to you the assurance of the continuance of my esteem and my friendship.

After the request I formerly made for forty cannon of different calibers, the present circumstances in which I find myself, require that I should procure twenty-four pounders, of which I have the most pressing need. I should therefore wish that you would cause them to be sent to me

as soon as possible, in case you should not, on the receipt. of the present, have sent the first to me, if finally they should have been already sent away, I expect, Mr. President, as a real proof of your friendship, for which I shall be infinitely obliged to you, that you will furnish and convey to me, forty other pieces, all of the caliber abovementioned.

This request will not appear in the least extraordinary to you, when you consider the very moderate and friendly manner, in which, differently from others, I have conducted myself towards the United States and their flag, notwithstanding that the doceurs and presents, stipulated four years ago for my making peace with the United States, have not all arrived, and that not the smallest part. of those which were intended for me individually have been sent. I make no doubt on this subject, that your consul will have forwarded the letter I addressed to you about two years past relative to it, and that you will thereby have seen, that I consented to wait the space of a year, in consequence of the representation which the same consul made to me, that several of the articles composing the present, due to me, and which I constantly expect, could neither be had or manufactured in the United States, and that they were to be procured from foreign countries.

Wishing on my part to return you a reciprocity (whenever an occasion of urgency in your nation happens) in my country, and hoping to see that good harmony which happily subsists between us continued and remain undisturbed, I pray Almighty God to preserve you, and I assure you, Mr. President, of my esteem and my most distinguished consideration.

[Signature and seal of Hamouda Pacha Bey of Tunis.]

At Bardo of Tunis, the 2nd of the moon Haggia, of the year 'Egira 1215, and the 15th April, 1801.

Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America, to Hamouda Pacha Bey of Tunis.

GREAT AND GOOD FRIEND,

THE letter which you addressed to the President of the United States of America, on the 15th of April, has been received, and has conveyed us the assurances always welcome, that your friendly dispositions towards these States, still continue firm and unimpaired. We feel deep regret that the regalia and other tokens of our esteem for you, had not at that date, reached their destination. These delays proceed from the distance of our situation, and from the circumstance that some of the articles acceptable to you, are not fabricated here, but are to be sought for in foreign countries, where also they require time to be prepared. We trust they will all have been received before this reaches you. We are a nation not practising the difficult arts, but employed in agriculture, and transportation of its produce for commercial exchange with others. Peace therefore with all nations is essentially our pursuit, so long as it can be obtained on just and equal grounds. Of this desire on our part we have given to the states bordering on the Mediterranean the same manifestations of which Europe had set the example. Like them, we consented to give a price for friendship, which would have been properly requited by our own. So long as we have been met with moderation and good faith, we have preferred these means of peace, rather than to seek it through our own strength. At length however, the inadmissible demands of the Bashaw of Tripoli, and our determination to owe to our own energies, and not to dishonourable condescensions, the protection of our right to navigate the ocean freely, have induced us to send a squadron into the Mediterranean sea, for the protection of our commerce against the Bashaw of Tripoli. We gave, illustrious friend, in strict charge to our officer, chief in command, to respect, and treat with particular friendship, your flags, your vessels, and your subjects, and to take an early occasion, after his arrival in

those seas, to testify his respect to you, to assure you of our adherence to the peace and friendship established with you, and of our orders to him to cultivate them with assiduity: and we trusted you would yield him that hospitable reception, and those accommodations in the ports of your domi. nions, which his necessities require. We did this with the greater confidence, as knowing the liberality of your mind, and being ourselves in the habit of rendering similar good offices to all nations in friendship with us.

Trusting good friend, that our consul will have received and delivered those evidences of our good will, which circumstances permit us to offer for your acceptance, we ask the continuance of your friendship in return for that which we sincerely bear to you; and pray to God that he may long preserve your life, and have you under the safeguard of his holy keeping.

Done in the United States of America, this 9th day of September, one thousand eight hundred and one.

TH: JEFFERSON.

SIR,

TUNIS, JUNE 28, 1801.

On the night of the 18th inst. a fire broke out in the Bey's palace, which in its progress consumed fifty thousand stands of arms. The second day following I received a message to wait on the Bey, but was at that moment confined to my bed with a bilious fever, so that it was not till this morning I have been able to go in my carriage to the palace. The Bey's object in calling on me was to demand of the United States, ten thousand stands of arms. I refused to state his demand. "I have proportioned my loss" said he "among my friends, and this falls to you to furnish. Tell your government to send them without delay." It is impossible, said I, to state this claim to my government. We have no magazines of small arms; the organization of our national strength is different from that of any other nation on earth. Each citizen carries

his own arms always ready for battle. When threatened with an invasion, or actually invaded, detachments from the whole national body are sent by rotation to serve in the field; so that we have no need of standing armies, nor depositories of arms. It would be an affront to my government, and an imposition on the Bey to state to them this demand, or to flatter him with a prospect of receiving it. "Send for them to France or England," said the minister. You are in a much more eligible position to make this commission to Europe than we are, said I. "If the Bey had any intention of purchasing the arms from Europe," said the minister, "he could do it without your agency. He did not send for you, to ask your advice, but to order you to communicate his demands to your government." And I came here, said I, to assure you that I will make no such communication to my government. "The Bey will write himself," said he. If so it will become my duty to forward his letter, but at the same time it is equally obligatory on me, to let the Bey be aforehand apprized, that he never will receive a single musket from the United States. I should suppose a sense of decency, if not of gratitude would dissuade the Bey from this new extravagant claim. Has he not within eighteen months received two large ship cargoes in regalia; have we not now another ship laden for him on its passage; and has he not within sixty days, demanded cannon extraordinary of the United States; at this rate when are our payments to have an end. "Never," said the minister; "as to the ships you talk of, they are but the part payment of regalia you have long since owed us, as the condition of peace; the other claims we make are such as we receive from all friendly nations, once every two or three years; it is an established custom, and you like others, will be obliged to conform to it." When we shall have completed the payment of our peace stipulations you may never calculate on further donations. It is by treaty considered as the conditions of a perpetual peace, and any new claims on your part, will be at least an infraction of the treaty, and will be so considered by us. You * VOL I 10