Meanwhile the President prepared his Message. Of all Jefferson’s writings none had a livelier interest than the Annual Message at the meeting of the Ninth Congress. The Second Inaugural, nine months before, prepared the public for new political opinions; but the Message surprised even those who looked for surprises. The Second Inaugural seemed to sweep old Republican principles to the common rubbish-heap of out-worn political toys. The Message went even further, and seemed to announce that the theory of foreign affairs on which the Republican Administration began its career must be abandoned. Jefferson intended it to carry such a meaning. “The love of peace,” he wrote to one of his old friends,[93] “which we sincerely feel and profess, has begun to produce an opinion in Europe that our government is entirely in Quaker principles, and will turn the left cheek when the right has been smitten. This opinion must be corrected when just occasion arises, or we shall become the plunder of all nations. The moral duties make no part of the political system of those governments of Europe which are habitually belligerent.” The Message began by an allusion to the yellow fever; from which it quickly turned to discuss the greater scourge of war:-- “Since our last meeting the aspect of our foreign relations has considerably changed. Our coasts have been infested and our harbors watched by private armed vessels; some of them without commissions, some with illegal commissions, others with those of legal form, but committing piratical acts beyond the authority of their commissions.... The same system of hovering on our coasts and harbors, under color of seeking enemies, has been also carried on by public armed ships, to the great annoyance and oppression of our commerce. New principles, too, have been interpolated into the law of nations, founded neither in justice nor the usage or acknowledgment of nations.... With Spain our negotiations for a settlement of differences have not had a satisfactory issue.... Propositions for adjusting amicably the boundaries of Louisiana have not been acceded to.... Inroads have recently been made into the territories of Orleans and the Mississippi; our citizens have been seized and their property plundered in the very parts of the former which had actually been delivered up by Spain, and this by the regular officers and soldiers of that government. I have therefore found it necessary at length to give orders to our troops on that frontier to be in readiness to protect our citizens and to repel by arms any similar aggressions in future. Other details necessary for your full information of the state of things between this country and that shall be the subject of another communication. In reviewing these injuries from some of the belligerent Powers, the moderation, the firmness, and the wisdom of the Legislature