A middle course may be thought more convenient.
“If we should find it consistent with the welfare of our State, that the Muscovite have an inlet into the Baltic, as having, of all the princes of Europe, a country that can be made most beneficial to its prince, by uttering its produce to foreign markets. In this case, it were but reasonable to expect on the other hand, that in return for our complying so far with his interest, for the improvement of his country, His Czarish Majesty, on his part, should demand nothing that may tend to the disturbance of another; and, therefore, contenting himself with ships of trade, should demand none of war.”
“We should thus preclude his hopes of being ever more than an inland power,” but “obviate every objection of using the Czar worse than any Sovereign Prince may expect. 1 shall not for this give an instance of a Republic of Genoa, or another in the Baltic itself, of the Duke of Courland; but will assign Poland and Prussia, who, though both now crowned heads, have ever contented themselves with the freedom of an open traffic, without insisting on a fleet. Or the treaty of Falczin, between the Turk, and Muscovite, by which Peter was forced not only to restore Asof, and to part with all his men-of-war in those parts, but also to content himself with the bare freedom of traffic in the Black Sea.[129] Even an inlet in the Baltic for trade is much beyond what he could morally have promised himself not yet so long ago on the issue of his war with Sweden.”