Who does not see the utter insufficiency of such a remedy, if such a
remedy could be at all adopted? We expel suspected foreigners from
hence; and we suffer every Englishman to pass over into France to be
initiated in all the infernal discipline of the place, to cabal and to
be corrupted by every means of cabal and of corruption, and then to
return to England, charged with their worst dispositions and designs. In
France he is out of the reach of your police; and when he returns to
England, one such English emissary is worse than a legion of French, who
are either tongue-tied, or whose speech betrays them. But the worst
aliens are the ambassador and his train. These you cannot expel without
a proof (always difficult) of direct practice against the state. A
French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we
have never experienced. The mischief is by far more visible than the
remedy. But, after all, every such measure as an Alien Bill is a measure
of hostility, a preparation for it, or a cause of dispute that shall
bring it on. In effect, it is fundamentally contrary to a relation of
amity, whose essence is a perfectly free communication.
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