longer than he will excuse; but, as I have promised to take some notice of the Vindicator’s attempt at recrimination, I must be as good as my word.
He has exerted his labyrinthian faculties to the utmost, in order to make it be believed, that the President of the United States ratified the Treaty with Great Britain, under the influence of what he modestly terms, a British Faction. With this object in view, he says, as addressing himself to the President—
“By my advice the United States would have been masters of all contingencies at the end of the campaign. To my unutterable astonishment, I soon discovered that you were receding from your determination. You had been reflecting upon your course from the 26th of June to the 16th of July: on the latter day you decided on it; a communication was made to the British Minister in conformity with it; letters were addressed to our own ministers in conformity to it; they were inspected by you before you rescinded your purpose: no imperious circumstances had arisen, except the strength of the popular voice, which would, according to ordinary calculation, corroborate, not reverse your former resolution; you assigned no new reasons for the new measures; and you disregarded the answer to Boston, although it had committed you upon a special fact, namely, a determination not to ratify during the existence of the provision-order. While I was searching for the cause of this singular revolution, and could not but remember that another opinion, which was always weighty with you, had advised you not to exchange ratifications until the provision-order should be abolished, or the American minister should receive further instructions, if it were not abolished; after duty had dictated to me an acquiescence in your varied sentiments, and I had prepared a memorial to Mr. Hammond adapted to them; after you had signed the ratification on the 18th of August; Mr. Fauchet’s letter brought forth a solution of the whole affair; thence it was that you were persuaded to lay aside all fear of a check from the friends of France; thence it was that myself and the French cause were instantaneously abandoned.”
This appears to be the sum of Mr. Randolph’s statement, the correctness of which is, at least, very doubtful; but, not to tire the reader with a discussion of little importance as to the main point, and in which I might possibly err, I shall take it for granted, that all that he has said and insinuated here is strictly true; and then his charge amounts to this: that the President, even after the decision of the Senate with respect to the treaty was known, hesitated, from the 26th of June to the 13th of July, as to what course he should pursue in regard to the ratification; that, on the day last mentioned, he came to a resolution not to ratify, until the order of his Britannic Majesty, for seizing provisions destined from this country to France, should be withdrawn; and that, notwithstanding this resolution, he did afterwards ratify, leaving the order in force, and that he was induced to this change of conduct from the discovery made by citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter.
Now, admitting all this to be so, it requires a greater degree of penetration than I am master of, to perceive how it proves the President to have ratified the treaty under the influence of a British faction, or any faction at all.
It would seem, that the Vindicator imagines, that, when a man has once taken a resolution, he can never change it, without incurring the censure of acting under some undue influence. How far such a maxim is from being founded in truth, the experience of every day will prove. A voluntary resolution must ever be supposed to be formed upon existing circumstances; and, of course, if any thing arises that totally alters those circumstances, it would be mere obstinacy to adhere to the resolution. If, for instance, a man determines on giving up a part of his income to a friend, and the next day finds that friend plotting against his life, must he, notwithstanding the discovery, put his determination in practice, or be subjected to the charge of acting under some undue influence? To maintain such a position appears to have been reserved for Mr. Randolph alone. The true question, therefore, is this: Was the discovery, made by citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter, sufficient to justify the President’s altering his resolution, or not?
The only objection that it is pretended the President ever had to ratify the treaty, as advised by the Senate, was, the existence of the order of the King of Great Britain for seizing provisions destined from this country to France; because, he was given to understand, that ratifying while this order remained in force, might look like acknowledging the legality of the seizure, and might embroil the United States with the French Republic. That this was the suggestion of Mr. Randolph he now avows; and he even owns, nay, boasts, that he never would have given his advice in favour of the ratification at all, if he had not remembered, “that if the people were averse to the treaty, it was the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to refuse, upon original grounds, unfettered by the Senate and President, to pass the laws necessary for its execution.”
He has been tempted to make this avowal in order to ingratiate himself with the opposition; and the need they have of a man, able and willing to expose every secret of the Executive, may, perhaps, ensure him a momentary success; but the avowal furnishes, at the same time, an irresistible proof of his double dealing. We plainly perceive from this, as well as from all the documents he has brought forward on the subject, that he was the great, if not the only cause, of the delaying of the ratification. First, he starts objections; then proposes conferences between himself and the English Minister; then he drafts memorials; in short, he was taking his measures for undoing all that had been done, or, as Mr. Pickering well termed it, for “throwing the whole up in the wind.”
The situation of the President was, at this time, truly critical. On the one hand, he saw an instrument ready for his signature, which completed the long-desired object, an amicable termination of all differences with Great Britain; an object that twenty long years of war and disputation had not been able to accomplish: on the other hand, he was haunted with the feigned, but terrific forebodings of an artful Secretary of State, who lost no opportunity of representing the consummation of the act as a just cause of offence to France, the faithful ally of the United States, and the favourite of the people. At this embarrassing moment arrives the intercepted letter of citizen Fauchet. The charm, that held him in suspense, is at once dissolved. Here he sees that the hypocrite in whom he had confided, who first awakened doubts in his mind, who had been the cause of all the procrastination, and who had hitherto withheld his hand; here he sees him at the head of a faction opposed to his government, unveiling all its most secret views to a foreign minister, and even making overtures for money, which, if acceded to, would have enabled that minister to decide on civil war or on peace for this country. Was it not natural to imagine, that he should now see the advice of this “pretended patriot” as a lure to lead him into a snare, to render the treaty abortive, and eventually plunge the United States into a war with Great Britain? And was it not, then, I ask, as natural, that he should turn from it with indignation and horror? “Hence it was,” says the Vindicator, “that myself and the French cause were instantaneously abandoned.” And, upon my soul, I think it was high time.
In this letter the President saw also, what it was he had to expect from the friendship of the regenerated French. Here he finds a foreign minister writing a letter that breathes, from the first syllable of it to the last, the most treacherous hostility to the Federal government. He finds him caballing with some of the leading men in the state, reviling his administration; representing him as the head of an aristocracy; approving of an open rebellion; regretting its want of success, and that he had not the means of nourishing it. All this he sees addressed to the rulers of a nation professing the sincerest friendship for himself and the people of America. Was it possible that he should see any thing here to induce him to delay the ratification of an instrument, calculated to ensure peace and uninterrupted prosperity to his country, merely for the sake of obtaining an advantage for that nation? “Hence,” says the Ex-Secretary, in his plaintive style, “hence it was that he was persuaded to lay aside all fear of a check from the friends of France.” And well he might; for, what more had he to fear from them? Open war with such people is as much preferable to their intrigues, as a drawn sword is preferable to a poisoned repast.
The Vindicator, pursuing his plan for opening to himself a welcome from the adverse party, insidiously brings forward the remonstrances against the Treaty as a reason that ought
