"The fear that Bonaparte will come over and conquer us also, is too chimerical to be genuine. Supposing him to have finished Spain and Portugal, he has yet England and Russia to subdue. The maxim of war was never sounder than in this case, not to leave an enemy in the rear; and especially where an insurrectionary flame is known to be under the embers, merely smothered, and ready to burst at every point.
These two subdued (and surely the Anglomen will not think the conquest of England alone a short work), ancient Greece and Macedonia, the cradle of Alexander, his prototype, and Constantinople, the seat of empire for the world, would glitter more in his eye than our bleak mountains and rugged forests.
Egypt, too, and the golden apples of Mauritania, have for more than half a century fixed the longing eyes of France; and with Syria, you know, he has an old affront to wipe out. .....A republican emperor, from his affection to republics, independent of motives of expediency, must grant to ourselves the Cyclop's boon of being the last devoured. While all this is doing, are we to suppose the chapter of accidents read out, and that nothing can happen to cut short or disturb his enterprises?'-Thomas Jefferson