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CHAPTER XVII.

Questions arising on the War between France and England. Views of the Cabinet. Mr. Jefferson's argument that the United States were not absolved from their treaties with France by its Revolutionit prevails with the President. His letters to Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe on the neutrality of the United States. Arrival of Citizen Genet, the French Minister-his reception. Rights of France under the Treaty of Commerce. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence with the French Minister. Genet's intemperate and offensive course-his recall-the popular feeling in his favour.

1793.

THE 3d of March, 1793, completed the constitutional term of the second Congress, as well as closed its session; and, on the following day, General Washington entered on his second presidential term, to which he was again elected by an unanimous vote. Mr. Adams having the next highest number of votes, was elected vice-president; but the states of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia gave their votes to Mr. Clinton of New York. Mr. Jefferson received the four votes of Kentucky; and without doubt he would have received those of Virginia, if her electors had been permitted by the constitution to vote for two of her citizens, as president and vice-president.

Early in April, the executive received the intelligence that France had declared war against England, and the president, who was then at Mount Vernon, hastened his return to Philadelphia, and the day after he arrived there, he submitted to each member of his cabinet a series of propositions in writing, respecting the course it would be proper for the United States

to pursue towards the belligerents, of which he requested their consideration, preparatory to a cabinet consultation the next day.

The questions thus propounded were in substance, whether a proclamation should issue for the purpose of preventing American citizens taking sides with the belligerents. Should it contain a declaration of neutrality? Should a minister from the French republic be received, and if so, absolutely, or with qualifications? Were the former treaties with France still binding on the United States, or might they be suspended? Would it be a breach of neutrality to consider these treaties still in operation? Is the guarantee in the treaty of alliance, applicable to an offensive, as well as a defensive war? What is the effect of such guarantee? Do the treaties prevent the ships of war of the enemies of France from coming into the ports of the United States for the purpose of convoy, or impose greater restraints upon them than upon French ships of war? Should the future regent of France send a minister, ought he to be received? Ought Congress to be called?

On the following day, the 19th, these questions were fully discussed in the cabinet; and while, as to a part of them, there was entire unanimity, on the others the members were utterly at variance; and their several opinions but too plainly took their hue from the parties to which the members respectively belonged. All the cabinet agreed that a proclamation, enjoining on the citizens of the United States the duties of neutrality, should be issued by the president; that a minister from France should be received, and that the occasion did not require an extraordinary meeting of Congress. They differed, however, as to the manner in which the minister should be received; Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Randolph the Attorney-General, thought that the relations between the two nations were unchanged by the revolution; while Colonel Hamilton and General Knox maintained that a nation had no right, by changing its political institutions, to involve other nations unconditionally in the consequences of those changes; and that, therefore, the minister

ought to be received with qualifications. They further denied that the revolution could be regarded as the unequivocal act of the nation, and referred to the enormities perpetrated at Paris as evidence that it was the act of a faction, which might be as speedily destroyed as it had been created. They regarded the guarantee of the French West Indies, as pregnant with serious danger to the United States; and, therefore, thought we should ' reserve for future decision, whether those treaties ought not to be suspendled. They also considered that the treaty of alliance being defensive, the guarantee did not apply to a war in which France was the aggressor.

On the main question-whether the treaties with France were now binding on the United States, the members of the cabinet, by the request of the president, defended their respective opinions in writing; and as the paper drawn by Mr. Jefferson is not only a most able vindication of the soundness of his views, both as a jurist and a statesman, but also discloses in substance the reasoning of his rival, it is here given at length, with the exception of his references to writers on national law.

Opinion of Thomas Jefferson on a question submitted by the Presi dent to his Cabinet on the 19th of April, 1793.

"I proceed, in compliance with the requisition of the president, to give an opinion in writing on the general question'whether the United States have a right to renounce their treaties with France, or to hold them suspended till the government of that country shall be established?'

"In the consultation at the president's, on the 19th inst., the

* It appears from a letter written by Colonel Hamilton to Mr. Jay, on the 9th of April, 1793, that he then doubted whether a minister ought to be received at all. "When we last conversed together on the subject," he says, "we were both of opinion that the minister expected from France should be received. Subsequent circumstances have, perhaps, induced an additional embarrassment on this point, and render it advisable to reconsider the opinion generally, and to raise this further question'whether he ought to be received absolutely, or with qualifications?"" He goes on to argue these questions, without coming to a decision whether a minister should be received or not.-Jay's Life, I. 298.

Secretary of the Treasury took the following positions and consequences. France was a monarchy when we entered into treaties with it; but it has now declared itself a republic, and is preparing a republican form of government. As it may issue in a republic or a military despotism, or in something else which may possibly render our alliance with it dangerous to ourselves, we have a right of election to renounce the treaty altogether, or to declare it suspended till their government shall be settled in the form it is ultimately to take; and then we may judge whether we will call the treaties into operation again, or declare them for ever null. Having that right of election now, if we receive their minister without any qualifications, it will amount to an act of election to continue the treaties; and if the change they are undergoing should issue in a form which should bring danger on us, we shall not be free to renounce them. To elect to continue them is equivalent to the making a new treaty at this time in the same form, that is to say, with a clause of guarantee; but to make a treaty with a clause of guarantee, during a war, is a departure from neutrality, and would make us associates in the war. To renounce or suspend the treaties, therefore, is a necessary act of neutrality.'

"If I do not subscribe to the soundness of this reasoning, I do most fully to its ingenuity. I shall now lay down the principles which, according to my understanding, govern the case.

"I consider the people who constitute a society or nation, as the source of all authority in that nation, as free to transact their common concerns by any agents they think proper, to change these agents individually, or the organization of them in form or function, whenever they please; that all the acts done by those agents under the authority of the nation, are the acts of the nation, are obligatory on them, and enure to their use, and can in no wise be annulled or affected by any change in the form of the government, or of the persons administering it. Consequently, the treaties between the United States and France were not treaties between the United States and Louis Capet, but between the two nations of America and France; and the nations remaining in existence, though both of them have since

changed their forms of government, the treaties are not annulled by these changes.

"The law of nations, by which this question is to be determined, is composed of three branches-1. The moral law of our nature. 2. The usages of nations. 3. Their special conventions. The first of these only concerns this question, that is to say, the moral law to which man has been subjected by his Creator, and of which his feelings, or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him. The moral duties which exist between individual and individual, in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state; their Maker not having released them from those duties, on their forming themselves into a nation. Compacts between nation and nation are obligatory on them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts.

There are circumstances, however, which sometimes excuse the non-performance of contracts between man and man: so are there also between nation and nation. When performance, for instance, becomes impossible, non-performance is not immoral. So if performance becomes self-destructive to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation to others. For the reality of these principles I appeal to the fountains of evidence, the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and there every man may read them for himself. He will never read there the permission to annul his obligations for a time, or for ever, whenever they become dangerous, useless, or disagreeable. Certainly not, when merely useless or disagreeable, as seems to be said in an authority which has been quoted. Vattel, II. 197. And though he may, under certain degrees of danger, yet the danger must be imminent, and the degree great. Of these it is true that nations are to be judges for themselves, since no one nation has a