Jefferson was not the man to indulge in effusions even when he was deeply moved and throughout his mission in France he deliberately refrained from any expression of personal feelings. But the love and friendship of the French for the United States was so general and so genuine, it formed such a contrast with the cold and tenacious enmity of Great Britain, that the American minister was won and conquered by it and had to come to the conclusion that "nothing should be spared to attach this country to us. It is the only one on which we can rely for support, under every event. Its inhabitants love us more, I think, than they do any other nation on earth. This is very much the effect of the good dispositions with which the French officers returned."[232] Everybody is familiar with the closing lines of Jefferson's account of his mission to France: "So, ask the traveller inhabitant of any nation, in what country would you rather live?--Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France." These lines were written at the twilight of his life, when his memory took him back to the wonderful days he had lived in Paris, while the old régime was shedding the last rays of its evanescent glory. Less known, but far more revealing of his true feelings at the time, is a passage in one of his letters to James Madison. It is one of the very few times, and as a matter of fact, the first time when he declared that the nations of the world had to abandon their old code of selfishness and that a new principle of international life had to be recognized. For there is only one standard of morality, one code of conduct between nations as between individuals.