but we may expect to derive a perfect triumph on the occasion, from the candour of those who have incautiously circulated injurious conjectures, and from the mortification of those who have wilfully fabricated iniquitous falsehoods.”
It seems that this A. J. Dallas is the self-same “Secretary of this State,” and that this governor is the same “governor of Pennsylvania,” of whom citizen Fauchet has made such honourable mention, and of whom we have been talking all this time. For my part, I do not know the men, nor either of them, nor have I any ambition to know them, but if they can see any thing in citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter from which they “expect to derive a perfect triumph,” I congratulate them on their penetration with all my heart. Should they triumph, their triumph will be perfect, indeed; for conscious I am, that it will be attended with this singular and happy circumstance, that it will excite envy in no living soul? Ref 056
As I am pretty confident that no further remark is necessary with respect to the persons who were to receive the product of Mr. Randolph’s overtures, I shall now speak to the second question: for what purpose were they to receive it?
I believe few people have read the intercepted letter without being fully convinced that the money, if obtained, was to be so employed as to enable the receivers openly to espouse the cause of the Western insurgents, and overturn the Federal government, or, at least, counteract its measures so far as to oblige those at the head of it to abandon it to the direction of those corrupt and profligate men who wished to prevent any accommodations taking place with Great Britain, and to plunge their devoted country into a war on the side of France. The passage of the letter where the overtures are mentioned authorizes this conclusion; and when we come to examine the other paragraphs, together with the extract from the dispatch No. 6, and to compare the whole of citizen Fauchet’s account with the well-known conduct of those who are clearly designated as the persons in whose behalf the money overtures were made, the evidence becomes irresistible.
To weaken this evidence, nothing has been advanced, that does not, if possible, add to its force, by showing to what more than miserable shifts and subterfuges the Vindicator has been driven. Nevertheless as we profess to make observations on the Vindication, all that it contains, however false and absurd, claims some share of our attention; and, therefore, we must now take a view of what has been said concerning the application of the money to be obtained by the overtures of Mr. Randolph, beginning, as before, with the certificate of citizen Fauchet.
After telling us, that he had frequently had conversations with Mr. Randolph about the insurrection, and that he himself suspected the English of fomenting and supporting it, he says:—
“I communicated my suspicions to Mr. Randolph. I had already communicated to him a Congress, which at this time was holden at New-York. I had communicated to him my fears, that this Congress would have for its object, some manœuvre against the Republic of France, and to render unpopular some virtuous men, who were at the head of affairs; to destroy the confidence which existed on one hand, between General Clinton (late governor of New-York) and his fellow-citizens, and on the other, that which united Mr. Randolph to the President.”
He then tells us the old story about the flour-merchants.
Now comes Mr. Randolph’s turn:—
“Our discourse,” says he, “turned upon the insurrection and upon the expected machinations of Mr. Hammond and others at New-York, against the French Republic, Governor Clinton, and myself.—Fresh as the intelligence was upon my mind, that the British were fomenting the insurrection, I was strongly inclined to believe that Mr. Hammond’s Congress would not forego the opportunity of furnishing, to the utmost of their abilities, employment to the United States, and of detaching their attention and power from the European war. I own, therefore, that I was extremely desirous of learning what was passing at New-York. I certainly thought that those men, who were on an intimate footing with Mr. Fauchet, and had some access to British connections, were the best fitted for obtaining this intelligence.”
And for this reason he recommended the flour-men. Oh, master Randolph! master Randolph, Oh!
Here, then, this worthy statesman was endeavouring to render a most important service to his country, His only object being to dive into the machinations that the English Minister and his Congress were hatching against the United States! A very laudable pursuit. This story has something in it so flattering to human nature, that it is a pity it should be the most abominable falsehood that ever issued from the procreant brain of a pettyfogging politician.
In the first place, nobody sincerely believed, that the English had even the slightest correspondence or connection with the insurgents; nor did any body ever, from first to last, pretend to avow such a belief, that I know of, except Mr. Randolph and a certain Governor. These two gentlemen endeavoured to impress the idea of such a connection as well on the mind of the President as on that of the public; but neither of these yielded to the insidious suggestion. Both very naturally demanded proofs, and proofs were not to be found; unless the insurgents’ howling out liberty and equality, their planting liberty trees, and their wearing cockades à la tricolore, were proofs of their attachment to the English. No one circumstance that has yet come to light is a stronger proof of a deep-laid plot against the Federal government than the efforts of these men to give a false direction to the public mind. While they were making overtures to the French Minister, while they were endeavouring to feed the insurrection from that source, they threw out, in order to disguise their views, insinuations that another nation was at the bottom of it.
And what was this pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond at New-York, that it should so alarm our Vindicator, and make his friend Fauchet fear, that something would be attempted by it to the prejudice of Mr. Randolph and the “virtuous” father-in-law Ref 057 of citizen Genet? Who composed this Congress? Why, Mr. Hammond was the President, and his wife, a sick child, and a nurse, were the members! A pretty Congress this to form machinations against the Government of the country, and to stir up a rebellion in a quarter four or five hundred miles distant! This Congress, too, was assembled at New-York, or rather on Long-Island, where I do not believe that citizen Fauchet had three or four, nor even one, flour-contractors; and, if so, how came the wise Mr. Randolph to imagine that the contractors would have made a journey from Virginia, where the greatest part of them were, or even from this city, to New-York, in order to dive into Mrs. Hammond’s and her maid’s secrets? The fellows must necessarily have remained some time there to effect the object of their mission; they must have gone skulking about incognito like other spies, and must of course have run the risk of kickings and rib-roastings in abundance; and all this for what? why truly, for nothing! for it would have been nothing, if they were to receive no more than what was “due them on their contracts,” and both our certificate-makers declare that they were not to have another farthing.
If the overtures had been for money to be employed in the procuring of intelligence of what the English Minister was about, is it not natural to suppose, that citizen Fauchet would have mentioned this circumstance in his very confidential letter? Yet we see that he has not let fall a word about it, either in his letter or in his dispatch, No. 6. Again, what would his reflections on such overtures have been? He would probably have exclaimed: Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have dived into all the machinations of the English! Instead of: “Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have decided on civil war or on peace! Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their prices!”—And, let me repeat, what could induce him to talk, in his dispatch No. 6, of throwing himself on the pure principles of his Republic, if nothing was in contemplation but the unravelling of the treacherous designs of the English?
But I do not rest upon this negative evidence to disprove all that the certificate-makers have attempted to impose on us, on this subject. Citizen Fauchet has let fall a sentence in his intercepted letter that proves, that he did not look upon the money overtures as being made with an intention of coming at
