so amusing and agreeable to all but the victim. Colonel Hamilton was by no means elevated at the prospect of his coming. At a cabinet meeting a short time before the landing, of the expected minister, he had dropped this remark: "When Mr. Genet arrives, whether we shall receive him or not will then be a question for discussion."

CHAPTER XLIX.

GENET COMING.

It seemed an odd freak of destiny that sent Edmond Genet, a protégé of Marie Antoinette, to represent the Republic of France in the United States. Gouverneur Morris, in his neat, uncompromising manner, sums up this young diplomatist, aged twentyeight in 1793, as "a man of good parts and very good education, brother to the queen's first woman, from whence his fortune originates." Even so. He was a brother of that worthy and capable Madame Campan, first femme de chambre to Marie Antoinette, and. after the queen's death, renowned through Europe as the head of a seminary for young ladies in Paris. It was she who wrote a hundred circulars with her own hand because she had not money to get them printed, and received sixty pupils the first year, Hortense, ere long, from Napoleon's own hand.

The father of this respectable, energetic family was, nearly all his life, under the influence of English and American ideas and persons. He lived in England many years, where he acquired familiar command of the English language, and a fond, wide acquaintance with English literature. Upon returning to his native land he seems — if we may judge from the long catalogue of his publications to have adopted it as a profession to make England known to France. Beginning with two volumes of Pope's best letters in 1753, he continued to publish translations from the English, and original works relating to England, until, in 1765, the list embraced twenty-two volumes. A few years later, when he held the post of chief clerk to the department of foreign affairs, he was in frequent intercourse with Dr. Franklin, Silas Deane, Beaumarchais, and all the American circle. His house, too, from 1765 to 1781, when he died, was one of those agreeable haunts of men connected with literature and art

which had, at that period, an éclat rivalling that of the great houses, where Power in its cruder forms of wealth and rank was represented. From such a home, it was natural enough that Henrietta Genet, at fifteen, should be invited to fill the place of reader to Mesdames the sisters of Louis XV., to be in due time advanced to a place of real importance in the régime of the period, that of "first woman to the young queen.

Nor was her brother's career quite such a caprice of fortune as it seemed. If, as a boy, he was noted in the palace for the warmth of his republican sentiments, it was only that he was in the mode. Did not the queen smile benignantly upon Franklin, and chat familiarly with him while she held the cards waiting her turn to play? Who more distinguished at court than Lafayette, the stern republican of nineteen? When the queen desired to give young Genet a start in the diplomatic career, his grand republican sentiments were rather a point in his favor than otherwise; and, at twenty-four, he had reached a position in the diplomatic service to which only court favor of the most irresistible description could have pushed so young a man. He was secretary of legation at St. Petersburg; whence, according to Morris, he wrote in so republican a style, that his despatches, read after the dethronement, made his fortune with the chiefs of the Gironde, who named him ambassador to Holland, his appointment bearing date November 14, 1792.

Suddenly the programme was changed, for a reason never conjectured till within these few months past. The Holland commission was revoked in December, and M. Genet was appointed to represent France in America. Genet, it appears, was at once a Girondist and a grateful friend to his royal benefactors, whom he was now in the habit of styling "Louis and Madame Capet." The-Girondists had adopted the scheme proposed by Thomas Paine of sending this hapless pair and their children to the United States; and Genet, as we are now assured, was selected for the purpose of promoting the project. A well-known writer, who has made a particular study of that period, and who apparently derived his information from the American family of M. Genet, holds this language, and emphasizes it by the use of italics :

"M. Genet was selected for the mission to America, by the more moderate republicans in France, because of his friendship with the deposed monarch, and for the express purpose of conducting the

imprisoned king and the royal family secretly to America. This arrangement was entered into at a meeting of the leading Girondists, at which our own Thomas Paine assisted; and it was at that meeting that M. Genet was tendered the mission, and accepted it, playfully describing, in response, to what occupations such and such of the royal exiles could be appropriated, on their arrival in Ameri

ca."

But it was no longer in the power of the more moderate republicans to control the course of events. If France was mad, England was not sane; and the man in England whose voice was mightiest, who should have been the great tranquillizing influence of the hour, was the maddest public man in Europe. "I vote for this (alien) bill," said Burke in Parliament, about the time of Genet's appointment, "because I consider it as the means of saving my life and all our lives from the hands of assassins. When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces: I see that the object of all their cajoling is blood." How was the mighty fallen! Here was genius stooping to clothe in powerful language the imbecile panic of ignorance. The raving of Burke, by infecting the policy of England, was among the influences in the French Convention that decided the king's fate. Louis was exiled to the other world, instead of going with Genet and Paine to the shores of the peaceful Delaware. A few hours after the news of his execution reached London, the British government, in effect, declared war against France; and, as soon as this intelligence reached Paris, February 1, 1793, France declared war, in form, against England.

Thus began the bloodiest struggle the modern world has known, which only ended after Waterloo. There was no pretext for the war which will bear the light of to-day. All thrones, it is true, were menaced in the fall of the French throne; and no king felt so sure of his head after January 21, 1793, as he had before that memorable date. Here was motive enough for the king of England, but not for the realm of Britain. The reason why Great Britain struck France in 1793 was, as the world is now informed, because France was weak. Such is the explanation given of the origin of this infernal war by a work that speaks to foreign nations with an

New York Historical Magazine for February, 1871, p. 143. Article by the editor, H. P. Dawson.

authority semi-official. France was sorely afflicted, distracted, anarchic. "All Europe was now leagued against her. Within she was divided by faction, and without she was assailed by immense hosts of the best disciplined soldiers of Europe, conducted by the most skilful leaders, to whom she had nothing to oppose but an undisciplined multitude, led on by inexperienced chiefs. In this state of things it seemed a safe measure to make war against her. To do so was only to retaliate the conduct she had herself pursued when she effected the dismemberment of the British Empire by assisting our revolted Colonies."* Such is the nature of dynastic rule. Such was that "British form," of which British Hamilton was so enamoured.

It was from the frenzy and delirium of all this that Citizen Genet sailed in the frigate L'Embuscade for the United States. He had, indeed, been ranked with the more moderate republicans; but in February, 1793, moderation was a quality unknown to the heart of civilized man. He was a Frenchman; he was a republican; he was twenty-eight; he was bearing to America the news that England, too, had sided in arms against his country. Long was this frigate tossed upon the wintry deep. She was driven far to the southward of her course, and the great tidings which she brought reached President Washington before L'Embuscade was heard of at the seat of government.

The genius for rectitude which General Washington possessed was never so manifest as on this occasion. Passion spoke but one voice. Here was our ally attacked by the great naval power of the world because she seemed prostrate and helpless! Here was France threatened with dismemberment because she had helped us in the crisis of our destiny! Here was the king who warred upon Americans, because they had demanded to govern America, presuming to deny the right of Frenchmen to govern France! Generosity, justice, gratitude, pride, and even policy, appeared to call upon the two republics to make common cause against the common foe. Was not England the common foe? Did she not hold the United States by the throat? What was the retention of the seven posts but suspended war? Such were the thoughts that naturally rose in the minds of a vast majority of American citizens when the news was

* Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. v. p. 547.