effect of indirect encouragement to domestic manufactures of the same kind, may induce the manufacturer to come himself into these States.” He was thus, as far as his office would allow him, thwarting the views of the President, but he was answered by a member of Congress, who showed the folly of such a system, and who showed, too, Jefferson’s inconsistency, by quoting his Notes on Virginia, which contain this passage: “While we have land to labour, then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied, at a work-bench, or twirling the distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operation of manufactures, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles.”—Notes on V. Query XIX. The report was evidently aimed at England; and, to make this clear, Madison, Jefferson’s bosom friend, in January 1794, moved a string of resolutions, proposing to follow it up, by imposing a higher scale of duties on leather, hard-ware, cottons, wool, and other articles, which were those then imported from England. The resolutions were negatived; but they were more than suspected to be Jefferson’s, and, in the intercepted dispatch from the French Minister, Fauchrt, alluded to in the preface to this work as bringing to light the treachery of Randolph, he says that they were Jefferson’s. The dispute between the English and French parties had now (1794) become, not warm, but hot; the depredations of English privateers and cruisers on the vessels of Americans, were made the stalking-horse of the friends of France; and, on the 27th March, 1794, Mr. Dayton moved a resolution, that “all debts due from citizens of the United States, to the subjects of the king of Great Britain should be sequestered.” It was carried by the Lower House, but rejected by the Senate; and now, Jefferson, finding himself in a cabinet to which he was so much opposed, and against which he was even working, retired to his estate in Virginia; but, before doing so, he recommended Randolph to Washington as his successor (see Jefferson’s Life, vol. 4, p. 506). Washington attempted to stem the tide, by desiring his new Secretary to lay before Congress a report of the depredations committed by England, France, Spain and Holland, on American commerce, and, though it appeared that France had committed the greatest, still the French party moved onward; the President was abused as a traitor to his country, and a Mr. Clarke moved a resolution in the Lower House for suspending all commerce with England. While the resolution was debating, Washington, by advice of the Senate, sent Jay (Chief Justice) off to England to negotiate this famous treaty. The Lower House passed Clarke’s resolution, but the Senate rejected it; the storm thickened—but enough of this has been seen in the “Bone to Gnaw.” When the treaty arrived in America, the friends of France fell upon it and its makers, and we now see that Jefferson, in retirement, launched his execrations on it in letters to his correspondents: in one he thus invokes Madison’s pen to put down the writers on the English side—“for God’s sake take up your pen, and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus” (Life and Correspondence, vol. 3, p. 322); and, in a letter to Rutledge, he says, “I join you in thinking the Treaty an execrable thing. I trust the popular branch of our legislature will disapprove of it, and thus rid us of this infamous act, which is really nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England and the Anglomen of this country” (Life &c. vol. 3, p. 323). The following pamphlet, then, is an answer to one supposed to be written by Mr. Dallas, Secretary of the State of Pennsylvania, but published under the assumed name of Franklin. It is a defence of the treaty, of Mr. Jay, and of the President. It is one of the best in the works of “Porcupine,” and, therefore, as well as that it shows the objects that the writer had in view, we place it in these selections, observing, that it was an account of writings in this manner and at so critical a juncture, that Mr. Windham, some years after (Debate 5th Aug. 1803), said in the House of Commons, in answer to an attack on Mr. Cobbett by Mr. Sheridan: “Before I had the pleasure to know him personally, I admired the conduct which he pursued through a most trying crisis in America; where, by his own unaided exertions, he rendered his country services that entitle him to a statue of gold.”
A treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, with Great Britain, is a thing which has been so long and so ardently desired on your part, and so often solicited by your government, that one cannot help being astonished that even the democratic, or French, faction should have the temerity to raise a cry against it, now it is brought so near a conclusion. It is true this perverse faction is extremely contemptible, as to the property they possess, and the real weight they have in the community; and their dissatisfaction, which is sure to accompany every measure of the Federal Government, is a pretty certain sign of the general approbation of those who may be properly called the people: but it must be acknowledged at the same time, that they have for partisans almost the whole of that description of persons, who, among us royalists, are generally designated by the name of mob.
The letters of Franklin are a string of philippics against Great Britain and the executive of the United States. They do not form a regular series, in which the subject is treated in continuation: the first seems to be the overflowings of passion bordering on insanity, and each succeeding one the fruit of a relapse. To follow the author step by step through such a jumble, would be to produce the same kind of disgust in you as I myself have experienced; I shall therefore deviate from the order, or rather disorder, which Franklin has found it convenient to employ, and endeavour to bring the subject before you in a less complicated point of view.
The censure of Franklin has three principal objects; the treating with Great Britain at all, the terms of the treaty, and the conduct of the President relative to the negotiation.
I. He asserts, that to form a commercial treaty with Great Britain is a step, at once unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous and dishonourable.
II. That, if forming a treaty with Great Britain were consistent with sound policy, the terms of the present treaty are disadvantageous, humiliating and disgraceful to the United States.
III. That supposing the terms of the treaty to be what every good American ought to approve, yet the conduct of the President, relative to the negotiation and promulgation of it, has been highly improper, and even monarchical, and for which he deserves to be impeached.
If Franklin has made out any one of these assertions; if he has proved, that to treat with Great Britain is unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous and dishonourable, that the terms of the present treaty are disadvantageous, humiliating and disgraceful, or that the President has pursued a conduct in the negotiation for which he deserves to be impeached, you will all do well to join the remonstrating throng, that are now hunting the President to his retreat at Mount Vernon; but if he has proved none of these; if all that he has said on the subject be mere cavilling and abuse, scolding, reviling, and execrating; if he be every where detected of misrepresentation, inconsistency, and flat contradiction; if, in short, it appears, that his ultimate object is to stir up the unwary to an indecent and even violent opposition against the Federal Government, then, if you consult your own interests, you will be upon your guard, and weigh well the consequences, before you determine on such an opposition.
I. Franklin asserts, that to form a commercial treaty with Great Britain is a step, at once unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous and dishonourable.
1. It is unnecessary, because “commercial treaties are an artificial means to obtain a natural end. They are the swathing bands of commerce, that impede the free operations of nature.” This will not detain us long; it is one of those chimerical notions that so well characterize the Parisian school. Nobody but a set of philosophical politicians ever imagined the plan of opening all the ports in the world to all the vessels in the world, “of interweaving and confounding the interests of all nations, of forming the inhabitants of the earth into one vast republic, of rendering the whole family of mankind enlightened, free and happy.” When this plan shall be put in execution with success, I will allow that commercial treaties are unnecessary, but, till then, I must contend for the contrary.
“The two countries,” says Franklin, “if necessary in their products to each other, will seek an intercourse.” This is all I wanted him to admit, to prove that an exchange of commodities between our countries is necessary; for that they have sought an intercourse with each other, and that they
