tainly existing, and which they mean to support, if such common consent be unattainable. All that can be done, in such a case, is to leave the principle unimpaired, reserving entirely the right to assert it. This has been done; the principle was left unimpaired, and has been since successfully asserted.

The United States are at all times truly solicitous to diminish as much as possible the list of contraband. It is their interest, in common with all other nations whose policy is peace, to enlarge, so far as they can be enlarged, the rights of neutrals. This interest is a sure guaranty for their using those means which they think calculated to effect the object, and which a just regard to their situation will permit. But they must be allowed to pursue the object in such a manner as may comport with that situation. While they surrender no actual right, in preserving which their is a common interest; while they violate no preexisting engagement (and these they have not surrendered or violated) they must judge exclusively for themselves how far they will or ought to go in their efforts to acquire new rights, or establish new principles. When they surrender this privilege, they cease to be independent, and they will no longer deserve to be free. They will have surrendered into other hands the most sacred of deposits -the right of self-government; and instead of the approbation, they will merit the contempt of the world.

Those parts of the treaty between the United States and Britain, which have been selected by France as injurious to her, have now been examined. The undersigned are too well convinced that they in no degree justify the enmity they are alleged to have produced, not to rely on a candid reconsideration of them as a sure mean of removing the impressions they are supposed to have made.

Before this subject is entirely closed, one other objection will be noticed. The very formation of a commercial treaty with England seems to be reprobated as furnishing just cause of offence to France; and Mr. Adet has permitted himself to say: "It was a little matter only to allow the English to avail themselves of the advantages of our treaty it was necessary to assure these to them by the aid of a contract, which might serve at once as a reply to the claims of France, and as peremptory motives for re

fusals; the true cause of which it was requisite incessantly to disguise to her under specious pretexts. Such was the object of Mr. Jay's mission to London; such was the object of a negotiation enveloped from its origin in the shadow of mystery, and covered with the veil of dissimulation."

Passing over this extraordinary language, the undersigned, being only desirous of producing accommodation by the exhibition of truth, will consider the opinion which is obliquely hinted, and the fact which is directly averred.

The practice of forming commercial treaties is so universal among other nations, having any commercial intercourse with each other, that it seems unnecessary to discuss their utility. The right to form these treaties has been so universally asserted and admitted, that it seems to be the inseparable attribute of sovereignty, to be questioned only by those who question the right of a nation to govern itself, and to be ceded only by those who are prepared to cede their independence.

But the prosperity of the United States is, in a peculiar degree, promoted by external commerce. A people almost exclusively agricultural have not within themselves a market for the surplus produce of their labour, or a sufficient number and variety of articles of exchange to supply the wants of the cultivator: they cannot have an internal, which will compensate for the loss of an external commerce: they must search abroad for manufactures, and for many other articles which contribute to the comfort and convenience of life, and they must search abroad also for a market for that large portion of the productions of their soil, which cannot be consumed at home. The policy of a nation thus circumstanced, must ever be to enCourage.external commerce, and to open to itself every possible market for the disposition of its superfluities, and the supply of its wants. The commercial and manufacturing character and capacities of England must turn into that channel a considerable portion of the commerce of any nation under the circumstances of the United States. It is a market too important and too valuable to be voluntarily closed; in consequence, a considerable portion of their commerce has taken that direction, and a continual solicitude has been manifested to regulate and secure it by contract. To abolish this commerce, or to refuse to give

it permanence and security by fair and equal stipulations would be a sacrifice which no nation ought to require, and which no nation ought to make, In forming her treaty of amity and commerce with the United States, France claimed no such prerogative. That treaty declares the intention of the parties to be, "to fix in an equitable and permanent manner the rules which ought to be followed relative to the correspondence and commerce, which the two parties desire to establish between their respective countries, states, and subjects ;" and that "they have judged that the said end could not be better obtained than by taking for the basis of their agreement the most perfect equality and reciprocity; and by carefully avoiding all those burdensome preferences, which are usually sources of debate, embarrassment and discontent; by leaving also each party at liberty to make respecting commerce and navigation, those interior regulations which it shall find most convenient to itself; and by founding the advantage of commerce solely upon reciprocal utility, and the just rules of free intercourse; reserving withal to each party the liberty of admitting at its pleasure other nations to a participation of the same advantages." The treaty itself contains no stipulation in any degree contradictory to these declarations of the preamble, or which could suggest a suspicion that under those declarations was concealed a wish to abridge the sovereignty of the United States with respect to treaties, or to control their interests in regard to commerce. In forming a commercial treaty with Britain, therefore, in which no peculiar privilege is granted, the government of the United States believed itself to be transacting a business exclusively its own, which could give umbrage to none, and with which no other nation on earth would consider itself as having a right to interfere. There existed consequently no motive for concealing from or declaring to France, or any other power, that the negotiations of Mr. Jay might or might not terminate in a commercial treaty. The declaration therefore was not made; nor is it usual for nations about to enter into negotiations, to proclaim to others the various objects to which those negotiations may possibly be directed. Such is not, nor has it ever been the practice of France. To suppose a necessity or a duty on the part of one government thus to proclaim all its

views, or to consult another with respect to its arrangements of its own affairs, is to imply a dependence, to which no government ought willingly to submit. So far as the interests of France might be involved in the negotiation, the instructions given to the negotiator were promptly communicated. The minister of this Republick was informed officially that Mr. Jay was instructed not to weaken the engagements of the United States to France. Further information was neither to have been required or expected; indeed, that which was given furnished reason to suppose, that one of the objects of the negotiation with Great Britain was a commercial treaty. Why then such unnecssary and unmerited sarcasms against a cautious and unoffending ally? Those objects which she pursued were such as an independent nation might legitimately pursue, and such as America never had dissembled, and never deemed it necessary to dissemble her wish to obtain. Why should an effort be made to impress France with an opinion, that Mr. Jay was not authorized to negotiate a commercial treaty with Britain, when the fixed opinion of America had ever been, that France could not be and ought not to be dissatisfied with the formation of such a treaty? Why should the minister of France have been informed officially, that Mr. Jay was especially instructed not to weaken the engagements of the United States to France, if it was intend to convince that minister, that his power did not extended to subjects in any degree connected with those engagements? To what purpose should the government of the United States have practised a deception deemed by itself totally unnecessary, and which its utmost efforts could not long continue? It requires an equal degree of folly and vice to practise an useless fraud which must inevitably and immediately be detected, and the detection of which must expose its author to general infamy, as well as to the enmity of those on whom the fraud had been practised. These considerations ought to have produced some hesitation concerning the fact. The testimony in support of it ought to have been very positive and very unexceptionable before it received implicit It should have been very clear that there was no mistake, no misunderstanding concerning the information communicated, before the charge was made in such terms. as the minister of France has been pleased to employ :

faith.

but the testimony is believed to be satisfactory, that the government of the United States has not endeavoured to impress on France any opinion on this subject, which the fact of the case did not warrant.-The declaration of Mr. Randolph, made July 8th, 1795, is full to this point. It is in these words: "I never could with truth have informed the French minister, that the mission, as set forth in the President's message to the Senate, contemplated only an adjustment of our complaints; if by this phrase it be intended to exclude commercial arrangements. I could have no reason for saying so, since the French Republick could have had nothing to do with our commercial arrangements, if they did not derogate from her rights: it could have answered no purpose when so short a time would develop the contrary-I never did inform the French minister as is above stated.

"The only official conversation, which I recollect with Mr. Fauchet upon this subject, was when I communicated to him, with the President's permission, that Mr. Jay was instructed not to weaken our engagements to France: neither then nor at any other time in official, or unofficial conversation, did I ever say to him that nothing of a commercial nature was contemplated, or that nothing but the controversies under the old treaty and the spoliations were contemplated.

"Mr. Fauchet sometime ago said to me, that he understood from what I said, that Mr. Jay was not authorized to treat of commercial matters. I told him that he misunderstood me, no letter has ever passed upon this subject."

If then, Mr. Randolph did give Mr. Fauchet the information contended for, it is plain that he never was authorized to do so; but the considerations already detailed render it infinitely more probable, that Mr. Fauchet has misunderstood Mr. Randolph, than that Mr. Randolph has misinformed Mr. Fauchet.

The undersigned have taken, they trust, a correct view of the leading and influential measures adopted by the government of the United States: they have endeavoured to state with plainness and with candour the motives which have occasioned the adoption of those measures, and the operation they are believed to have. They have shown, that if America is to be reproached with partiali