your political existence had depended upon France, it would, I believe, have been at an end long before this time. Citizen Genet was ordered to promise you, that his country would “send to the American ports a sufficient force to put them beyond insult;” but, if they had defended your possessions no better than they have their own, they would have brought you into a poor plight. If the fleet, they were so good as to offer you, had been no more successful than the others they have sent out, it might as well have remained at home, blocked up, as their fleets now are, and left you to the defence of your own privateers. They have given but a poor sample of their protecting talents, either at home or abroad. Letting two-thirds of their colonies be taken from them, and making war upon the rest themselves, is not the way to convince me that you would have been safe under their protection. Nobody but a madman would ever commit his house to the care of a notorious incendiary.
Franklin proceeds exactly in the manner of citizen Genet (of whom he is a pupil, as we shall see by-and-by): First, he tells you that “Great Britain has contemplated either your misery or subjugation, and that armaments were made to this end.” Then he tells you that “France alone has saved you; that she is now fighting your battles; that you owe her much; that she gave you independence, and that she alone is able to preserve it to you.” After this, fearing that these weighty considerations may not have the desired effect, he has recourse to the last trick in the budget of a political mountebank, menaces. He tells you dreadful tales about the resentment of France, and this he makes a third source of danger in treating with Great Britain.
“The conduct of the French republic,” says he, “towards us has been truly magnanimous, and, in all probability, she would have made many sacrifices to preserve us in a state of peace, if we had demeaned ourselves towards her with becoming propriety; but can we calculate upon her attachment, when we have not only slighted but insulted her? To enter into a treaty with Great Britain at this moment, when we have evaded a treaty with France; to treat with an enemy against whom France feels an implacable hatred, an enemy who has neglected no means to desolate that country, and crimson it with blood, is certainly insult.” Then on he goes to terrify you to death. “Citizens of America,” says he, “sovereigns of a free country, your hostility to the French republic (in making a treaty with Great Britain, he means) has lately been spoken of in the National Convention, and a motion for an inquiry into it has been only suspended from prudential motives.—The book of account may soon be opened against you—what then, alas! will be your prospects?—To have your friendship questioned by that nation, is, indeed, alarming!”—There spoke the Frenchman! there broke forth the vanity of that vaunting republic!
The above are certainly the most unfortunate expressions that ever poor demagogue launched forth. What he has here said, completely destroys the position he meant it to support. If you must be so cautious in your demeanour towards the French republic, if you dare treat with no nation against whom she feels an implacable hatred, if to treat with a nation that has endeavoured to desolate that country, is to expose your conduct to an inquiry in the National Convention; if to have your friendship questioned by that nation is an alarming circumstance; if to refuse treating with her, when and how she pleases, is to open the doomsday-book of account against you; if all this be so, I can see no reason for apprehensions on account of your independence, for you are no more than mere colonies of France. Your boasted revolution is no more than a change of masters.
The fact is, as you stand in no need of the protection of France, so you have no cause to fear her resentment. She may grumble curses against you, but speak out she will not. She dares not, she dares not make a second attempt to overturn your Federal Government, by appealing from “the President to the Sovereign People.” You are “the sheetanchor” of her hopes, and not she of yours. To you she clings in her shipwrecked condition, to you her famished legions look for food, and to you her little pop-gun fleets fly for shelter from the thundering foe. What have you then to expect, what to fear from a nation like this? Nothing, alas! but her insidious friendship.
4th. Franklin asserts that it is dishonourable to treat with Great Britain; “because,” says he, “her king is a tyrant that invaded our territory, and carried on war against us.” He seems to have made a small mistake here; for, at the time the king of Great Britain invaded your territory, it was his territory, and you his loving subjects; at least, you all declared so. However, without recalling circumstances, that can be of no use in the present discussion, admitting all that has been said on this subject to be true; that the fault was entirely on the side of Great Britain, that all her conduct was marked with duplicity and cruelty, and all yours with frankness and humanity; admitting all this, and that is admitting a great deal, yet, how long has it become a principle in politics, that a nation, who has once done an injury to another, is never after to be treated with upon a friendly footing? Is this a maxim with any other State in the world? How many times have you seen France and England, after the most bloody contests, enter into an amicable treaty of commerce, for their mutual advantage? Have they not done so since the American war? and will they not do so again as soon as the present war is over? Nay, has not France very lately, unmindful of her promises and oaths, entered into a treaty of amity, and almost alliance, with his Royal Majesty of Prussia, who had invaded her territory, without having the least shadow of excuse for so doing? Is it for you alone, then, to sacrifice your interest to your vengeance, or rather to the vengeance of France? Are you to make everlasting hatred an article of your political creed because she wills it?
To this old grudge, Franklin adds some injuries recently received from Great Britain. The first of these is her depredations on your commerce. To urge the depredations on your commerce as a reason against treating, is to find fault with a thing for being calculated to accomplish its object; by treating, you have guarded against such depredations for the future, and have obtained a compensation for the past. I shall enter more fully into this subject when I come to speak of the terms of the treaty; at present it is necessary to speak of the depredations, only as they render a treaty with Great Britain dishonourable.
In the first place, the injury does not appear to me to be of so outrageous a nature as Franklin would persuade you it is. It was possible, at least, that the orders of the British Court might be misunderstood of misconstrued. It is also possible that great part of the vessels seized were really employed in a commerce that would justify their seizure by the law of nations. Admitting, however, that the British cruisers and Courts of Admiralty have done no more than fulfil the intention of their king, and that none of your captured vessels were employed in a contraband trade, yet I cannot allow that the depredations committed on your trade is a sufficient reason, or, indeed, any reason at all, for your not treating with the nation who has committed them. To maintain the contrary, is to adopt that system of eternal irreconciliation which I shall ever deprecate, and which militates against every principle of justice and sound policy. The partisans of France, and Franklin among the rest, were for demanding satisfaction in such a manner, that Great Britain, consistent with her honour (for I must be excused for thinking she has some left), could not grant it; but must not a treaty have been the consequence at last? Suppose they had succeeded in plunging you into a war, that war itself must have ended in a treaty, and a treaty much more dishonourable, perhaps, than the one now negotiated; unless, indeed, their intention was to wage a bellum eternum, side by side with their French brethren, till there should be no government left to treat with. These people are always for violent measures; they wanted a commercial treaty with Great Britain, but then she was to be “forced” into it; and now again they wanted satisfaction, but it is not worth a farthing, because no violence has been used to obtain it. They are of the taste of Swift’s “true English dean that was hanged for a rape;” though they have all their hearts can wish for, their depraved appetites render it loathsome, because it has been yielded to them without a struggle.
But it is, or ought to be, the opinion of Franklin himself, that depredations on your commerce ought to be no bar to your treating with the nation who has committed them; for he has exhausted himself to persuade you that a treaty ought to have been made with France, and yet it is notorious that her depredations have very far outstripped those of the British. Within the last five or six months the French have seized upwards of two hundred of your vessels; some they have confiscated,
