Milestone Documents of American Leaders

Alexander Hamilton’s “Against an Alliance with France”: Document Text

by Alexander Hamilton

“Against an Alliance with France” (1794)

All who are not willfully blind must see and acknowledge that this country at present enjoys an unexampled state of prosperity. That war would interrupt it need not be affirmed. We should then, by war, lose the advantage of that astonishing progress in which strength, wealth, and improvement which we are now making, and which, if continued for a few years, will place our national rights and interests upon immovable foundations. This loss alone would be of infinite moment; it is such a one as no prudent or good man would encounter but for some clear necessity or some positive duty. If, while Europe is exhausting herself in a destructive war, this country can maintain its peace, the issue will open to us a wide field of advantages, which even imagination can with difficulty compass.

Alexander Hamilton

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(Library of Congress)

But a check to the progress of our prosperity is not the greatest evil to be anticipated. Considering the naval superiority of the enemies of France, we cannot doubt that our commerce would in a very great degree be annihilated by a war. Our agriculture would of course with our commerce, receive a deep wound. The exportations which now continue to animate it could not fail to be essentially diminished. Our mechanics would experience their full share of the common calamity. That lively and profitable industry, which now spreads a smile over all of our cities and towns, would feel an instantaneous and rapid decay.

Nine-tenths of our present revenues are derived from commercial duties. Their declension must of course keep pace with that of the trade. A substitute cannot be found in other sources of taxation without imposing heavy burdens on the people. To support public credit and carry on the war would suppose exactions really grievous. To abandon public credit would be to renounce an important means of carrying on the war, besides the sacrifice of the public creditors and the disgrace of a national bankruptcy.…

But we are told that our own liberty is at stake upon the event of the war against France—that if she falls, we shall be the next victim. The combined powers, it is said, will never forgive in us the origination of those principles which were the germs of the French Revolution. They will endeavor to eradicate them from the world. If this suggestion were ever so well-founded, it would perhaps be a sufficient answer to it to say that our interference is not likely to alter the case; that it would only serve prematurely to exhaust our strength.…

To subvert, by force, republican liberty in this country, nothing short of entire conquest would suffice. This conquest, with our present increased population, greatly distant as we are from Europe, would either be impracticable, or would demand such exertions as, following immediately upon those which will have been requisite to the subversion of the French Revolution, would be absolutely ruinous to the undertakers. It is against all probability that an undertaking, pernicious as this would be, even in the event of success, would be attempted against an unoffending nation, by its geographical position little connected with the political concerns of Europe.…

If there can be any danger to us, it must arise from our voluntarily thrusting ourselves into the war. Once embarked, nations sometimes prosecute enterprises of which they would not otherwise have dreamed. The most violent resentment, as before intimated, would no doubt in such a case, be kindled against us for what would be called a wanton and presumptuous intermeddling on our part; what this might produce, it is not easy to calculate.…

Let us content ourselves with lamenting the errors into which a great, a gallant, an amiable, a respectable nation has been betrayed, with uniting our wishes and our prayers that the Supreme Ruler of the world will bring them back from those errors to a more sober and more just way of thinking and acting; and will overrule the complicated calamities which surround them, to the establishment of a government under which they may be free, secure, and happy. But let us not corrupt ourselves by false comparisons or glosses, nor shut our eyes to the true nature of transactions which ought to grieve and warn us, nor rashly mingle our destiny in the consequences of the errors and extravagances of another nation.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Hamilton, Alexander. "Alexander Hamilton’s “Against An Alliance With France”: Document Text." Milestone Documents of American Leaders, edited by Paul Finkelman, Salem Press, 2009. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=mdal_63d.
APA 7th
Hamilton, A. (2009). Alexander Hamilton’s “Against an Alliance with France”: Document Text. In P. Finkelman (Ed.), Milestone Documents of American Leaders. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Hamilton, Alexander. "Alexander Hamilton’s “Against An Alliance With France”: Document Text." Edited by Paul Finkelman. Milestone Documents of American Leaders. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2009. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.