fomenting the insurrection; that he was well persuaded that the insurgents never looked for support from them; and that he was fully convinced of the meanness and baseness of all those who attempted to propagate such an opinion. “But,” says he in the 15th paragraph of the letter, “but, in order to obtain something on the public opinion, it was necessary to magnify the danger, to disfigure the views of those people (insurgents), to attribute to them the design of uniting themselves with England.—This step succeeded, an army is raised, &c. &c.” Here, then, he unequivocally gives the lie to every word that he has said on the subject in his certificate, and to every word that Mr. Randolph has been awkward enough to repeat after him. If he was so well informed that all these malicious tales about the interference of the English were invented and propagated merely in order to obtain something on the public opinion by magnifying the danger and disfiguring the views of the insurgents, all which, it is clear, he learnt from the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph; if he was so thoroughly convinced of all this, at the time of writing his letter, in October 1794, how comes he to recollect, in the month of August 1795, that both he and Mr. Randolph did “really suspect, that the English were fomenting the insurrection?” No; they never suspected any such thing; and they, and all others who pretended to suspect it, have only discovered to what pitiful tricks, what political quackery, they were reduced.
One closing observation on this subject. If money had been wanted to obtain intelligence concerning the pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond; if this object was so near Mr. Randolph’s heart as he hypocritically declares it was, whom ought he to have applied to? Whom would he naturally have applied to for the necessary sums? Whom but the President of the United States, under whose authority alone he could have acted in so delicate a conjuncture? He would have laid before him his suspicions of the dreadful Congress, and proposed to him the means the most likely of unveiling its machinations; and, if money had been necessary, it would, of course, have been granted. But, instead of this, away he runs to a foreign minister, and unbosoms himself to him, as if the secret was of too much importance to be deposited in the breast of the President, or as if the French had more interest in quelling the insurrection than the United States had. He appears to have looked upon citizen Joseph Fauchet as his father confessor; and for that reason it was, I suppose, he reserved for his ear, like a pious and faithful penitent, those precious secrets that he had kept hidden from all the world besides. In the council chamber at Philadelphia he was troubled with a locked jaw; but the instant he entered the confessional on the banks of the Schuylkill, to which the citizen seems to have retired on purpose, the complaint was removed, and he said more in “twenty minutes” than he will be able to unsay in twenty years.
To the side of a stream, in a deep lonely dell,
Father Joseph retir’d, as a hermit to dwell,
His hermitage, crown’d with a cap tricolour,
Brought a beggarly pilgrim his aid to implore.
First the holy man promis’d, and, for his professions,
The penitent made him most precious confessions.
Now tell me, dear son, said the hermit, your needs:—
Give me, good Father Joseph, a string of gold beads.—
A string of gold beads, says the hermit, Parbleu!
Your request, my dear son, appears dev’lish new,
He told him, in short, he was damnably poor,
Kick’d him out of his den, and slam’d to the door.
It is a great pity we are obliged to quit this delightful theme to return to the dry mercenary overtures of Mr. Randolph.
As it appears that he cannot persuade us that the money was to be employed for the purpose of coming at the machinations of the English, let us now see to what purpose it is much more likely it was to have been applied.
From the intercepted letter we learn, that the complying with the overtures would have enabled the French Republic to decide, for this country, on civil war or on peace; and we are told, in the extract No. 6, which has been intruded on us purposely to give a favourable turn to this passage of the latter, that the money, if obtained, would have put it in the power of four men to save the country. Mr. Randolph, in handling these two passages, has gone rather beyond his usual degree of assurance. He has taken a phrase from one and a phrase from the other, and tacked them together to suit himself. This done, he boldly asks, “what were to be the functions of these men.” And then comes out his triumphant answer—“To save the country from a civil war.” This is Lord Peter again with his totidem verbis. By running over the two papers, or either of them, this way, culling a phrase here and a phrase there, he may make them say anything he pleases; and he may do the same thing with any other writing. In this manner he may make even the New Year’s Gift say that he is an upright, worthy, incorruptible man; and God knows how far that is from the sentiments of the author. Is this phrase, which he compounded of ingredients taken from two different places, to be found in any part of citizen Fauchet’s dispatches? Has this tattling father confessor any where said, that the overtures were for money to save the country from a civil war? Has he said anything that will countenance such an inference? No; his dispatches, in every rational construction they will bear, clearly lead to a contrary conclusion.
He could have decided on civil war or on peace. If we are to understand by civil war, a successful opposition to the Federal government, the whole of his letter, from one end to the other, proves that nothing was so near his heart. He everywhere exclaims against the ambitious views of the Government, and defends the cause of the insurgents. He speaks of them as an oppressed people, and of the laws which they were armed to oppose, as harsh and unnecessary. The anarchical assembly in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, those outrageous villains who insulted the officers of justice, plundered the mail, drove peaceable and orderly people from their dwellings, dragged others forth to endure every other cruelty short of death, and who, in a word, were daily committing robbery and murder; this assembly of ruffians he calls, “the very pacific union of the counties in Braddock’s Field! a union which could not justify the raising of so great a force as fifteen thousand men.—Besides,” added he, “the principles uttered in the declaration of these people, rather announced ardent minds to be calmed, than anarchists to be subdued.”
When he comes to speak of those who wished to enforce the excise law, he gives way to the most bitter invectives, and almost curses the officers of Government, who counselled the marching of the troops. But, at last, he is compelled to give an account of the triumph of the Federal army; and here we plainly perceive, by the chagrin he expresses at that event, what he would have desired. He laments that the Government will acquire stability from it “for one complete session at least,” the discredit it will throw on “the insurgent principles of the patriots,” and concludes with this, to him, melancholy reflection:
“Who knows what will be the limits of this triumph? Perhaps advantage will be taken by it to obtain some laws for strengthening the Government, and still more precipitating the propensity, already visible, that it has towards aristocracy!”
Who, then, can be stupid enough to believe that if this man had had “some thousands of dollars to advance,” he would have advanced them to aid the Government, either directly or indirectly, against the insurgents, and to save the country from a civil war? And yet this we must believe, before we believe that Mr. Randolph, who was in all his secrets, would have made him overtures for that purpose.
As to the words in the dispatch No. 6, which are allowed to signify save the country, they must not be thus disjointed from what precedes them. The passage is this:
“Scarce was the commotion known when the Secretary of State came to my house. All his countenance was grief.
