Jefferson’s views involved an association which would furnish one or more cruisers each to act against piracy in the Mediterranean. It included Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark, and Sweden, an extremely difficult combination; but he doubted the good faith of others. In a letter to Monroe, August 11, 1786, he says: “I think every power in Europe would soon fall into it except France, England, and perhaps Spain and Holland. Of these there is only England who would give any real aid to the Algerines....” He added: “Were the honor and advantage of establishing such a confederacy out of the question, yet the necessity that the United States should have some marine force, and the happiness of this, as the ostensible cause of beginning it, would decide on its propriety. It will be said there is no money in the treasury. There never will be money in the treasury till the confederacy shows its teeth.... Every rational citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both.”[17] This was Jefferson at his best. It is extraordinary that when the time came to really assert ourselves against the seizure of our seamen and property by other powers than those of Barbary, he should have so completely failed. But in any case, at the time he was proposing his floating confederacy, our inchoate system of government of the period, which required each state to be solicited by Congress for funds, would no doubt, as Adams thought, have made it impossible to provide the needed ships. Our vessels continued to be seized and their crews enslaved. It would be unjust to the memory of John Adams, to whom the Continental navy chiefly owed its beginnings, and who was ever the vigorous supporter of the newer navy, not to record his life-long views as expressed to the House of Representatives in November, 1800: “I confidently believe that few persons can be found within the United States who do not admit that a navy, well-organized, must constitute the natural and efficient defence of this country against all foreign hostility.” To this he was consistent through the whole of his long life. In 1785 he was simply doubtful of the travesty of government which then existed and was to have two more years of its ineffective life.