to his council, the questions of which the above charge forms the substance.
The treaties here spoken of were made with Louis XVI., whose minister, at the time these questions were proposed for consideration, was resident at Philadelphia. The President knew, indeed, that the king was dead; but he, at the same time, knew that the treaties were binding on the United States in behalf of his lawful “heirs and successors,” and he certainly knew that Pétion, Danton, Roland, Clavière, Condorcet, Brissot, and the innumerable horde of bloody usurpers who have come after them, were not those “heirs and successors!” He also knew, that even the whole French nation could not, in the sense of the treaties, become the “heirs and successors” of Louis XVI., and, though treaties, made with a monarch, may remain in force with the nation under a new form of government, yet this is, as most assuredly it ought to be, entirely at the option of the other contracting party. The American government had, therefore, an indisputed right to refuse to execute, in behalf of the French nation, treaties made with their sovereign alone.
If we turn back a little, we shall find this very audacious and unprincipled Convention, whose minister was coming to Philadelphia, publicly deliberating, “whether the treaties, made with the tyrant Louis, were binding on the regenerated nation, or not.” This question was determined in the negative, and accordingly the treaty with Holland was immediately violated. And yet they will not permit the poor Government of America to debate about any such thing, nor even to talk of it in secret, though the result be in their own favour! Let it be remembered, too, that Genet came authorized to make new treaties, a pretty certain proof, that the Convention did not call in question the right of the Government to refuse to adhere to the old ones. It is a proof of more; it is a proof that they expected that it would make the refusal. Would to God their expectation had been realized!
I will not go so far as to say, that the Federal government was fully justified in its decision on this important subject; Ref 060 but I insist that its conduct evinced the utmost partiality for the new Republic. When Genet arrived here, it was far from being ascertained that the whole, or even a majority, of the French nation, approved of the murder of their sovereign, or had abandoned the cause of his successors. The Government of America had, but a few months before, beheld them raising their hands to heaven, and swearing to die, if necessary, in defence of their king. Their constitution, establishing an hereditary monarchy, had been voluntarily formed, and solemnly sanctioned by the whole nation, amidst festivals and Te Deums, and had been officially communicated to the world. Each member of the Assembly, as well as every individual Frenchman, had repeatedly sworn “to maintain this constitution with all his might.” Laws had been made, punishing with transportation all who refused to take the oath, and till then unheard-of cruelties had been exercised on the non-jurors. After all this, was it astonishing that the Federal government should, for a moment, hesitate to believe, that the nation was really become a Republic, and that this constitution, about which there had been so much noise, and rejoicing, and feasting, and singing, and swearing, should be so completely destroyed as to leave neither remnant nor rag visible?
The Government had the interests of America to attend to in this important decision, as well as those of France. A weighty debt was due from this country, not to the regenerated nation nor to its bloodthirsty tyrants, but to Louis XVI., his heirs and successors. A minister from the Republic once admitted, a claim of the interest of the debt could not be refused; and if the volatile and perjured nation had recalled the successor of their sovereign, would not that successor have demanded, and with justice, a second payment of such interest? This has not yet happened, but it does not follow that it might not have happened. In the common affairs of men, he who has been once convicted of perjury, is never after looked upon as credible; and the same rule is applicable to societies.
Republicanism is become, for what reason I know not, synonymous with freedom and happiness, and there are thousands among us who pretend to believe, notwithstanding the terrible example before their eyes, that men cannot be enslaved under a form of government that is called republican. Mr. Adams, in his Defence of the American Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 87, says:
“Our countrymen will never run delirious after a word or a name. The name Republic is given to things in their nature as different and contradictory as light and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, happiness and misery. There are free republics, and republics as tyrannical as an oriental despotism.—
How fully is the truth of these observations exemplified in the republics of America and France! But even this wise and deep-sighted civilian could not imagine that his countrymen would ever run delirious after a name; much less could he imagine, that he should live to see many of them extolling, as the paragon of republics, a system of tyranny that has all the appearance of being an instrument of the wrath of Heaven.
I shall dismiss this first charge against the Government, with observing, that the meanness equals the impudence of making it.
“2. The Government made a proclamation of insidious neutrality.”
This charge is as false as it is rude. I would beg this well-informed and polite citizen, to name one single instance of the insincerity of the Federal government, in enforcing this proclamation. As applied to the conduct of some part of the people, indeed, the neutrality might be called insidious; but then, this insidiousness operated in favour of the French and not against them. There were many who highly approved of the proclamation, and who at the same time actually made war upon the enemies of France. An army of Americans, under the authority of Genet, invaded the Spanish territories, while privateers were fitted out to cruise on the British: cargoes of ammunition and arms were shipped off, and thanksgivings, and other public demonstrations of joy, were heard from one end of the Union to the other. The bells of the good old Christian church, opposite me, fired rounds to celebrate the inundation of the atheistical barbarians into Holland; and the English flag was burnt at Philadelphia, on the public square, as a sacrifice to the goddess of French liberty. These latter circumstances are trifling in themselves, ’tis true, and certainly excited nothing but contempt and ridicule, in the minds of those whom they were intended to insult; but, the question is (and it is to ask this question that they are here mentioned), what would the French, that “terrible nation,” have said, had these insults, these marks of an insidious neutrality, been offered to them? Every opprobrious term in their new-fangled vocabulary would have been heaped on our heads. How many sacrés mâtins, and jean-f—tres, and f—tus chiens, and libertécides, and neutralitécides, would they have called the poor Anglo-Americans, in the course of a Decade!
Where a breach of neutrality, cognizable by the laws, appeared, the Federal government always did its utmost to bring the offenders to justice, and it is for this very reason, that the late diplomatic Mounseer has dared to accuse it of an insidious neutrality. After the proclamation was issued, and Genet saw that there was no hope of setting it aside by inciting the people to rebellion, he feigned an acquiescence, and declared that the Convention did not wish the prosperity of their dear brethren of America to be interrupted by a participation in the war. It entered into his delirious brain, that the proclamation was to be a mere cloak, under which he thought to enlist as many soldiers and arm as many privateers as he could pay for. Such a neutrality would, indeed, have been more advantageous to France than an open declaration of war on the part of the United States; but when he found that the Government was resolved to enforce the proclamation; when he found that his pirates were not permitted to rob and plunder with impunity, and that the American harbours were not to serve them as hiding places, whence they might sally out upon poor old John Bull, as their great predecessor did upon the bevees of Hercules; then he began to foam and sacré Dieu against the libertécide government, for “neutralizing the zeal of the citizens and punishing the generous children of liberty, for flying to the relief of their mother, when she was upon the point of violation by a horde of crowned monsters.”
The only breach of neutrality with which the Federal government can possibly be charged, is, the liquidation of the French debt. This favour, as beneficial to France as it was apparently hazardous to the United States, would
