interference in our behalf. Fauchet told the Government he was in daily expectation of it, and yet it never came. How will citizen Adet get out of this? We have him fairly hemmed up in a corner here; and he has a devilish deal more wit than I take him to have if he gets himself decently out of it.—He tells us that the French government had taken measures for the relief of the captives, that the mediation was in a charming train, that Fauchet communicated this pleasing intelligence to the President, who waited with anxious expectation for further information, which Fauchet hourly expected to receive, and that
“then Mr. Jay was charged to negotiate with the British government.”
Well, and what then?—Why,
“and then citizen Fauchet did not receive any communication on the subject.”
What?—O, oh! and so then, it seems Mr. Jay’s being appointed to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with King George, prevented the agreeable information, “the facts proving the sincerity of the French protestations of friendship” from being received! and did so completely do away all those steps which were to be taken, and which were taking, and which had already been taken, that they were never after heard of! Surprising, that the United States should have chilled, should have perished even, the zealous interest that France took in their distresses, merely because they wished to avoid still greater distresses by an amicable negotiation elsewhere!
Let us recur to him also. A lie that is bound down to dates is difficult to be successfully kept up.
The committee of public safety (it should have been called the committee of public misery) instructed citizen Fauchet on the 5th of January 1794, to inform the American government that they were about taking means for “breaking the chains of our captive citizens in Algiers.” This “proof of the protestations of their friendship” did not come to Fauchet’s hands till the 4th of the ensuing June, just five months to an hour; and when it did at last arrive, citizen Fauchet could not tell by what route!—A pretty story this, and a pretty sort of ambassador to receive dispatches of such importance, without knowing by whom or by what route. Let Citizen Adet and his worthy predecessor, Father Joseph, go and impose such humbug tales upon the poor stupid enslaved Hollanders and Genevese, they will find few such gulls here.
Again: how could the appointment of Mr. Jay prevent the reception of further information, if such information was daily expected? Robespierre and his bloody colleagues, who felt such a tender concern for the captives, could not hear of this appointment sooner than about two months after it took place; the information promised, as they say, on the 5th of January, must therefore have been on the way; and what then, I would be glad to know, prevented its coming to hand? That it never did come to hand Master Adet has confessed; and we must inevitably conclude therefrom, that it was never either promised on that side of the water, or expected on this.—These dates form a net in which the citizen has hampered himself. He had got the Messidors and the Fructidors into his brains, and could he have got them into ours also, could he have made us adopt the bestial calendar of Poor Richard, we might have lost our account too; but by sticking to the good old June and January we have caught him out.
The motive for advancing the charge at this time is, to instil into the minds of the people, that the President felt extremely indifferent as to the fate of the captives. This base, this calumnious, this insufferably insolent insinuation, I leave to the resentment of those for whose sake he has undergone every toil and every hardship, has a thousand times ventured his life, and, what is more, has patiently borne the viperous bite of ingratitude.
“5. The Government allowed the French colonies to be declared in a state of blockade, and allowed the citizens of America to be interdicted the right of trading to them.”
It is a wonder citizen Adet did not swell the list here. He might, with equal reason, have complained that the Federal government allowed the British to conquer the half of these colonies; that they allowed Lords Howe, Hood, and Bridport, to destroy their fleets; and that they allowed Prince Charles to beat and pursue their boasting army. He might have complained, that they are about to allow the sans-culotte General Moreau to be Burgoyned, and the ruffian Buonaparte and his wolfish comrades to leave their lank carcasses in Italy, which I hope and believe will be allowed. Had he complained that they allowed it to rain, to snow, and to thunder, his complaint would not have been more absurd than it now is.
But the Government also allowed “the American citizens to be interdicted the right of trading to these colonies.”—As to the power of preventing this, the same may be said as of the prohibitions above supposed; and as to the right of preventing it, if the power had existed, nothing can be said, unless we knew the exact state of the blockades to which the citizen alludes, but of which his Blunderbuss gives no particular account.
When a place or an island is actually invested in such a manner as to enable the besieger to prevent neutrals from entering, he has a right, according to the immemorially established law of nations, not only to exercise this power of prevention, but to seize on and confiscate both goods and vessels, and even to inflict corporal punishment on all those who transgress his prohibition. Ref 061 That the British have sometimes declared places in a state of siege which were not really invested has often been asserted, but never proved; but it is well known, on the other hand, that they never went to the rigour of the law of nations with those who had the temerity to disregard their prohibitions, in attempting to enter places which were completely blockaded.
Numerous complaints of captures, made at the entrance of the ports of an island, amount to a pretty strong presumptive proof that the captor has formed an actual investiture. If he has done this, he certainly has a right to declare it; and it follows, of course, that no neutral power has a right to take offence at his declaration. When one of the neutral captains complained that the British intercepted and seized on every vessel that attempted to enter the port of St. Pierre’s, and, in the very same letter, inveighed against the illegality of their declaring the place in a state of blockade, he talked like a good honest tar: and when we hear a public minister echoing the complaint we may pardon his ignorance, but we cannot help wishing, at the same time, that he had been sent to hand, reef and steer, stew up lobscous, or swab the deck, rather than to pester us with his boorish grumbling and tarpauling logic.
Where a merchant, or a mariner, through love to the besieged, or hatred to the besieger, through avarice or through indiscretion, has lost his property by an endeavour to elude the prohibition of trading to a blockaded place, it is very natural, and therefore perhaps excusable, in him to be vociferous in complaint against the injustice of the captor; but it is not quite so natural or excusable in his government to participate in his resentment, and plunge the nation into a war to avenge him. Were the harmony of nations to be disturbed by the passions of individuals, peace must take her flight to heaven, for she would never find a resting place on the face of the earth.
It is, however, certain that very many of the captures made by the British cruisers were contrary to the law of nations, and therefore called for the interposition of the general Government. And has not that Government interposed? Yes; and so effectually too, that a mode of indemnification, as equitable and as honourable as either party could wish for, has been firmly settled on. Supposing then, for a moment, that France had a right to make inquiries on the subject, what more does she want? Strange as it may seem to those who are inattentive to the intrigues of this at once volatile, ferocious, and artful republic, it is the success of the negotiation by which this very indemnification was obtained that has occasioned the charge now preferred by her minister! The French, or rather the French usurpers, rejoiced at the British depredations on the commerce of this country; nothing was farther from their wishes than to see the sufferers indemnified. They were in hopes of a rupture being produced between Britain and America, and they are now foaming at their disappointment.
To this charge respecting blockades and the seizure of American vessels may be added that which citizen Adet makes with regard to the impressment
