136

CABINET DIFFERENCES.

[CHAP. III.

to that of confiscation, should the arms fall into the hands of either belligerent when on the way to an enemy's port. The demand of the British Minister for the restitution, by the United States, of the prizes captured by the French privateers fitted out at Charleston, but not within waters under the jurisdiction of the American Government, was reserved for further consideration. The following is the concluding paragraph of the answer:

"I trust, sir, that in the readiness with which the United States have attended to the redress of such wrongs as are committed by their citizens, or within their jurisdiction, you will see proofs of their justice and impartiality to all parties; and that it will insure to their citizens pursuing their lawful business by sea or by land, in all parts of the world, a like efficacious interposition of governing powers to protect them from injury, and redress it, where it has taken place. With such dispositions on both sides, vigilantly and faithfully carried into effect, we may hope that the blessings of peace on the one part, will be as little impaired, and the evils of war on the other, as little aggravated, as the nature of things will permit; and that this should be so, is, we trust, the prayer of all." 1

1

The French Minister, De Ternant (not yet superseded by Genet) was officially notified the same day of these declarations.

There does not, so far as we discover, appear to be evidence of a division in the Cabinet on the principles settled by those declarations.

A letter of May 3d, from Hamilton to Jefferson, shows that the latter had complained of the Secretary of the Treasury's transcending his official province in receiving and answering applications from M. de Ternant, in regard to certain fiscal arrangements. Hamilton explains the circumstances under which he had supposed it proper to thus communicate directly with the French Minister, and declared "it would give him pain" that Jefferson "should consider what had been done as the infringement of a rule of official propriety. He assured him this was not his intention." This unimportant fact in itself considered is introduced to show, what we do not remember elsewhere to have seen (no hint of it being given, we believe, in Jefferson's writings), that those constant encroachments of Hamilton on Jefferson's official province, of which the latter complained to the President, went sometimes from substance to

1 Jefferson's Works, Congress edition, vol. iii. p. 557. 2 Hamilton's Works, vol. iv. p. 391

CHAP. III.]

CABINET OPINIONS.

137

even official forms; and that, in one instance at least, they drew Jefferson's direct rebuke on the offender. Beyond this we observe no conflicts of any kind in the Cabinet, from the disposal of the Treaty question to that we are about to record.

On the subject of the reserved question-of the restitution, by the United States, of prizes taken on the high seas by the French privateers fitted out in an American port (Charleston) and manned in some part by American citizens-the President took the opinion of the three Cabinet officers in writing, who were accustomed to give written opinions. That of the Secretary of the Treasury was delivered first, (May 15th) and took ground, unconditionally, in favor of complying with the claim of the English Minister in this particular.' The Secretary of State delivered his opinion the next day. He assumed that the act complained of was to be considered-1st, as an offence against the United States; 2d, as an injury to Great Britain. He proceeded:

"In the first view it is not now to be taken up. The opinion being, that it has been an act of disrespect to the jurisdiction of the United States, of which proper notice is to be taken at a proper time.

"Under the second point of view it appears to me wrong on the part of the United States (where not constrained by treaties) to permit one party in the present war to do what cannot be permitted to the other. We cannot permit the enemies of France to fit out privateers in our ports, by the 22d article of our treaty. We ought not, therefore, to permit France to do it; the treaty leaving us free to refuse, and the refusal being necessary to preserve a fair neutrality. Yet considering that the present is the first case which has arisen; that it has been in the first moment of the war, in one of the most distant ports of the United States, and before measures could be taken by the Government to meet all the cases which may flow from the infant state of our Government, and novelty of our position, it ought to be placed by Great Britain among the accidents of loss to which a nation is exposed in a state of war, and by no means as a premeditated wrong on the part of the Government. In the last light it cannot be taken, because the act from which it results placed the United States with the offended, and not the offending party. Her minister has seen himself that there could have been on our part neither permission nor connivance. A very moderate apology then from the United States ought to satisfy Great Britain."

He thought an ample apology had already been made in the pointed disapprobation of the transaction expressed by the Government, and in the promise to take effectual measures against a repetition. He said the French commission to the

For the opinion, see Hamilton's Works, vol. iv. p. 391.

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CABINET OPINIONS.

[CHAP. III. commander of the privateer was good or not good. If not good, the legal tribunals of our country would take cognizance of the affair, and make restitution of the capture. If there was a "regular remedy at law, it would be irregular for the Government to interpose." If the commission was good, as the capture occurred on the high seas, the British owner had lost all his right, and the prize would be pronounced good, even in his own courts. The legal right having been transferred absolutely to the captor, it would be purely an act of force-a reprisal for the offence committed against the American Government-to take it from him. Remonstrance and refusal of satisfaction ought to precede so serious a measure as national reprisal-and if ripe for that step, Congress must be called to take it, for in it, and not in the Executive, was the right of reprisal vested by the Constitution.'

We have given Mr. Jefferson's line of argument pretty fully, because it shows that his opinions were somewhat peculiar, and as far from the French as from the English extreme. It appears here unequivocally that he did not give the construction to the twenty-second article of the treaty which France, and not without some strong show of reason, placed on it, and which was sustained by the warmest sympathizers with that power in the United States.

Knox concurred with Hamilton; and Randolph arrived at the same conclusion with Jefferson, by the same train of argument. Randolph's paper was drawn up with marked ability, and a spirit gleamed through it which showed what he was capable of when he let his better understanding display itself. In the parallel passage to that where Jefferson's answer to his own first proposition is given, Randolph's manner of treating the topic is, in our judgment, decidedly preferable. He, with as much spirit as dignity, said:

"What relates to the dignity of the United States is not an affair of any foreign nation. If they thought proper to waive satisfaction to themselves for the affront and injury, they cannot be called to an account by any foreign power; and if they do require satisfaction, its degree and kind depend upon their discretion."

The Cabinet being equally divided, the President did not make an immediate decision, but he soon after decided in con

The paper entire will be found in Jefferson's Works, Congress edition, vol. vii. p. 626.

CHAP. III.]

GENET'S OFFICIAL RECEPTION.

139

formity with the opinions of Jefferson and Randolph, and the British Minister was so notified in a communication from the Secretary of State, dated 5th of June.'

Pending this affair (May 16th) Genet arrived in Philadelphia. He had met, in the towns between there and Charleston, the same enthusiastic reception as at his landing. While one party desired that his approach to the seat of Government should be as little noticed as possible, the other was determined to give it all the éclat in its power. Arrangements were made for meeting him at Gray's Ferry, by a vast crowd of citizens, and escorting him into town; but according to a contemporaneous letter from Jefferson to Madison (May 19th), he "escaped that by arriving in town with the letters which brought information that he was on the road." Jefferson added:

"The merchants, i. e. Fitzsimmons & Co., were to present an address to the P. on the neutrality proclaimed. It contained much wisdom, but no affection. You will see it in the papers inclosed. The citizens are determined to address Genet. Rittenhouse, Hutcheson, Dallas, Sargeant, etc., were at the head of it. Though a select body of only thirty was appointed to present it, yet a vast concourse of people attended him. I have not seen it; but it is understood to be the counter address."

On the French Minister's presentation to General Washington, the latter received him, says Judge Marshall, "with frankness, and with expressions of a sincere and cordial regard for his nation." In the conversation which ensued, says the same writer, the French Minister gave the most explicit assurances that, "in consequence of the distance of the United States from the theatre of action, and of other circumstances, France did not wish to engage them in the war, but would willingly leave them to pursue their happiness and prosperity in peace.

Jefferson, in the letter already quoted from, gives the scene more in extenso :

"He [Ternant] delivered yesterday his letters of recall, and Mr. Genet presented his of credence. It is impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more

Hildreth, in his History of the United States (2d ser. vol. i. p. 418), appears to state this fact the other way. It is a favorite hypothesis, among a class of writers, that Jefferson constituted a sort of "opposition in the Cabinet, and was usually or most frequently in the minority when important questions were decided in that body. This view will be found wholly unsupported by the facts, and it is explicitly contradicted in a letter by General Washington.

Hamilton himself afterwards yielded to the force of Jefferson's positions on the subject of restoring the prizes. (See his Works, vol. v. p. 569.)

2 Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. ii. p. 561.

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PURPORT OF GENET'S MISSION.

[CHAP. III. magnanimous than the purport of his mission. We know that under present circumstances we have a right to call upon you for the guaranty of our islands. But we do not desire it. We wish you to do nothing but what is for your own good, and we will do all in our power to promote it. Cherish your own peace and prosperity. You have expressed a willingness to enter into a more liberal treaty of commerce with us; I bring full powers (and he produced them) to form such a treaty, and a preliminary decree of the National Convention to lay open our country and its colonies to you for every purpose of utility, without your participating [in] the burdens of maintaining and defending them. We see in you the only person on earth who can love us sincerely, and merit to be so loved. In short, he offers everything, and asks nothing. Yet I know the offers will be opposed, and suspect they will not be accepted. In short, my dear sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is passing in our conclave; and it is evident that one or two, at least, under pretence of avoiding war on the one side, have no great antipathy to ruu foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of princes against human liberty."

The magnanimous waiver of the American guaranty of the French West India possessions-the gallant declaration of the French Republic, that it would wage the terrible conflict before it alone, and (borrowing even the cold language of Judge Marshall) leave the United States "to pursue their happiness and prosperity in peace "-struck a chord of national feeling which still further inflamed the prevailing enthusiasm in favor of France. Contrasting its course with that of England, granting nothing, yielding nothing, holding on to a part of our territory as if to a conquest, but at the same time captiously claiming all and more than was conceded to France, it is not wonderful that some Federalists of mark were swept along by the prevailing torrent of enthusiasm. "We, too, have our disorganizers,' wrote Hamilton in a letter evincing his extreme disgust at the popular attentions received by Genet.

We must here interrupt the narration of the unfortunate progress of our relations with France, to bring those with another European power down to the same point, in order to obtain the benefit of that light which they reciprocally throw on each other.

For a period prior to the dethronement of the French Bourbons, an intimate family pact had subsisted between them and the Spanish Bourbons. This had in a good measure controlled the foreign policies of both powers. It had exercised a very strong influence on the relations between Spain and the United States. A variety of causes rendered these unfriendly, but