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Should success crown the efforts of France against England, there will remain but gloriously to terminate this long war, to give freedom to commerce and make other powers adopt the system. Political liberty will then acquire that degree of perfection and breadth of which it is susceptible and philosophy will see with joy the olive branch of an eternal peace shade the course of science and industry.

This letter possesses two great points of interest. One that it marks the first approach of Fulton to Napoleon, leading as will be seen below to a far more important suggestion than that of building small canals; and the other that it is animated by an intense desire for French success over England. That this was in the beginning Fulton’s hope is to be borne in mind when, as will be shown, having developed in 1804 the opposite or pro-British sympathy, he lived and worked during two years in England for the destruction of Napoleon’s power though perhaps not of French ascendancy. The letter speaks of a “lasting peace.” That is something that the same nations a century and a quarter later are still seeking.