You will be pleased to observe, that we press these matters warmly and firmly, under this idea, that the war between Spain and Great Britain will be begun before you receive this; and such a moment must not be lost. But should an accommodation take place, we retain, indeed, the same object and the same resolutions unalterably; but your discretion will suggest, that patience and persuasion must temper your conferences, till either of these may prevail, or some other circumstances turn up, which may enable us to use other means for the attainment of an object which we are determined, in the end, to obtain at every risk.[268] Naturally this is no worse than the ordinary run of instructions sent at that time to diplomatic agents by other foreign secretaries, and Jefferson's policy was no more underhanded than the policies of any other nation of the Old World. It cannot be said, however, that it rested upon higher and nobler moral principles. Perhaps America had no diplomatic tradition at that time, but she was not deficient in tactics, and neither Jefferson nor his agents were exactly innocent tools in the hands of wily European diplomats. But this is not all. Jefferson unfolded his whole plan in a letter to Short written a week later. In case of a war between England and Spain, France would be called into the war as an ally on the side of Spain. She would have a right to insist that Spain should do everything in her power to lessen the number of her potential enemies and to eliminate every cause of friction with the United States. "She cannot doubt that we shall be of that number, if she does not yield our right to common use of the Mississippi, and the means of using and securing it." The point made by the United States was that "they should have a port near the mouth of the river, so well separated from the territories of Spain and her jurisdiction, as not to engender daily disputes and broils between us." Such a claim was not an arbitrary one, but resulted from the configuration of the land. "Nature has decided what shall be the geography of that in the end, whatever it might be in the beginning, by cutting off from the adjacent countries of Florida and Louisiana, and enclosing between two of its channels, a long and narrow slip of land, called the Island of New Orleans." Jefferson conceded that the idea of ceding that territory might be disagreeable to Spain at first, because it constituted their principal settlement in those parts, with a population of ten thousand white inhabitants, but "reason, and events, however, may, by little and little, familiarize them to it." The idea, however, might seem excessive to Montmorin, particularly as it was thought that France had not entirely given up the project of recovering the country along the Mississippi. But fortunately the National Assembly seemed opposed to conquest and the subject might be broached merely in general terms at the beginning.