crees, she pleaded an overpowering pressure, and promised reparation: 66 Being informed that some French privateers have taken vessels belonging to the United States of America, I hasten to engage you to take the most speedy and efficacious means to put a stop to this robbery."-Mongé, Minister of Marine, to the Ordonnateurs of France, March 30, 1793. Thus France was ingenuous even in her agony of social convulsion. "Although it [the treaty of 1778] is reciprocal upon the whole, some provisions are more specially applicable to the fixed position of the United States, and others have allusion only to the eventual position of France. The latter has stipulated few advantages-advantages which do not in any respect injure the United States, and the lawfulness of which no foreign nation can contest. The French nation will never renounce them."-M. Tallegrand to Mr. Gerry, January 18, 1798. The Convention of 1800 was then, in fact as well as in form, a treaty of equivalents. Can the United States impeach it now, on the ground of the inadequacy of the equivalent received. Certainly not, sir. It is too late; the parties are changed. The merchants' claims are just the same, whether you received an adequate equivalent, or exchanged their demands for an insufficient consideration. Nevertheless, let us pursue the objection. You say that however intrinsically just the claims may have been, they were renounced because you could not collect them without resort to war. I reply, a just claim against a civilized state is never valueless. If the state is insolvent to-day, it may become able to pay to-morrow; if it refuse to be just to-day, it may become more just to-morrow. It is true that the United States were not bound to declare war for the claims, but it is equally true that they had no right to confiscate them without indemnity. Thus we have reached one of the main defences against these claims, viz: Fifthly. That the ancient treaties had become void as against the United States, and therefore the release of them by France in 1800 was valueless. This argument involves two propositions: 1. That France flagrantly violated those compacts. 2. That the United States perfectly fulfilled them. 1. That France flagrantly violated those compacts. The chief object of the treaties of 1778 was the establishment of the liberty, sovereignty, and independence of the United States, in the war of the Revolution, and forever afterwards. France fulfilled her guarantee in the Revolution. But the merit of that fulfillment is denied. It was said by one of my predecessors, [Mr. Dix,] that France was not moved by generosity or sympathy in entering into the treaties, or in fulfilling them. Sir, a nation whose pride can condescend so far as to receive benefits, vindicates itself fully by the exercise of unquestioning and enduring gratitude. Interest and ambition do indeed too often mingle with the purest and highest of human motives, not less of states than of individuals. But the character of motives must be determined by the character of the actions in which they result. In the strait of the Revolution, your agents applied for aid, not to the King of France only, but also to the Emperor of Germany, to the Kings of Spain and Prussia, and to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. From neither of them could they gain so much as a protest to discountenance the hire of mercenaries by the German princes to the King of Great Britain, to be employed with savage Indian tribes against us. But France yielded money, volunteers, recognition, and armed alliance. Was there no merit in that? It is true, that in our oppressor France found a rival to humble and overthrow. But had Britain no other rival or enemy than France? If there were others, why did we not win them to our side? France did indeed exact a guarantee from the United States in exchange for her own. But did we find any other power willing to enter into such an exchange? Moreover, France conceded to us all the conquests which should be made by the allied armies, in the war of the Revolution, except such as would have been useless to us, and even including the Canadas, of which we had so recently assisted to deprive her; and she insisted on no remuneration after the war should end. Was there no magnanimity in that? France was not actuated chiefly by ambition or revenge in making the engagements of 1778. The people, and even the court, were filled with enthusiastic admiration of the United States and of their cause. Fenelon had already educated even royalty in that cause, in the palace, and under the eye of the Grand Monarque. The court, the army, the navy, the rulers and the people of France, had no standard of a hero but Washington, no model of a philosopher but Franklin, nor of a state but the United States. Seventeen years ago I traversed the now deserted and desolate chambers of the Bourbons of France. Never shall I forget the grateful pride I felt when I found among the family pictures of the House of Orleans one which commemorated the visit of Franklin to the Palais Royale, and among the illustrations of the national glory at Versailles, one that celebrated the surrender of Cornwallis. The failure of Louis XVI. as a king resulted from his attempting, like Nerva in ancient Rome, and Pio Nono in modern Rome, to combine those two incompatible things, the enlargement of popular freedom with the maintenance of regal power. Nor may we undervalue the aid received from France. It decided the contest. It cost her more than three hundred millions of dollars, and hurried her into a Revolution more exhausting than any other state, in the tide of time, has endured. Thus it appears that France fulfilled faithfully and completely her chief engagements in the treaties of 1778, while it is admitted that she failed afterwards in less essential obligations, but with protestations of adherence and promises of reparation. 2. Did the United States completely and absolutely fulfil their reciprocal obligations? When the war of 1793 broke out, France held all the possessions in America which they had guarantied to her forever, and they were all exposed. Yet the United States never defended, nor attempted to defend them; never devoted a life nor even a dollar to that end. Thus, instead of standing on fulfilment, we are at once brought to the necessity of justifying a non-performance of the engagements. The justification has been placed on several grounds, viz: 1. That France did not demand fulfilment. Such an inference is warranted by some of the papers before us, but there are others which leave the fact very doubtful. "I beg you to lay before the President of the United States, as soon as possible, the decree and the inclosed note, and to obtain from him the Cabinet decision, either as to the guaranty that I have claimed the fulfilment of for our colonies, &c."-E. C. Genet's Letter of November 14, 1793. But if France did not demand the performance of the guaranty in the war, she insisted on its obligation. The United States practically disavowed and renounced it. The proposition is self-evident. The treaty stipulated alliance, when France should demand it. The United States assumed neutrality in every event. 2. The non-performance by the United States has been justified on the ground that the casus fœderis of the stipulated guaranty was a defensive war, and that the war of 1793 was not of that character. In reply to this argument, I observe, in the first place, that the terms of the Treaty of Alliance stipulated for the execution of the guaranty in the case of "war to break out:" Any war, offensive or defensive. But the Senator from Virginia [Mr. HUNTER] Overpowers us with an argument which to me is irresistible. He says that only a defensive war must have been contemplated, because a stipulation for aid and alliance in an aggressive war would be immoral, unjust, and therefore void. Sir, I acknowledge that higher law of universal and eternal justice, to which the honorable senator refers. And I admit that all laws of states, and all treaties and compacts between states, which contravene its sacred provisions, are utterly void and of no effect. I accept therefore the senator's definition of the casus fœderis; that it was a defensive war. I controvert, and I rest my cause upon controverting, his assumption, that the war of 1793, between the allied powers and France, was on her part an aggressive, and not a defensive war. The very proclamation of neutrality implied a denial of that assumption. The war therein described was a war "between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France, on the other." Why was the aggressor the last party to be named? But history has determined the character of the parties in that momentous contest. "The first war of the French Revolution," says Wheaton, in his History of the Law of Nations, "originated in the application by the allied powers of the principle of armed intervention to the internal affairs of France, for the purpose of checking the progress of her revolutionary principles and the extension of her military power." War was declared, indeed, by France, but only as a reply to the ultimatum of a restoration of despotism tendered by the armed league of enemies. Thus, sir, we have arrived at the true ground of defence of the neutrality of 1793, to wit: that performance of the treaty was impossible. Sir, in a practical sense, performance was impossible. First, on account of the condition of France. The parties in 1778 of course expected that France would remain an organized state, capable of conducting combined operations under the treaty, upon a method and toward an end, without danger from herself to her ally. But it was not so with France. She became not merely revolutionary, but disorganized, having no certain and permanent head, no stable and effective legislature. All the organs of the state were shattered, broken, and scattered. "Nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla Senatus." The king, after unavailing changes of ministry, convened the assembly of the notables. After holding the bed of justice, and after attempting to establish the new plenary courts, he called the states general, which soon became a constituent assembly, absorbing all the functions of government. Suddenly the people of Paris rose, and brought the king, queen, and assembly into captivity. A constitutional monarchy rose under the dictation of the people; but the king was degraded, condemned, and executed, and a republic appeared. The republic went down before the power of cabals, which rapidly succeeded each other, all sustaining their administrations, throughout a reign of terror, by the tribunal of blood. These unnatural convulsions could have but one endthe restoration of the state by a dictator. That magistrate, in 1800, appeared in the person of Napoleon. When and where, before that event, could the United States have been required to go to the aid of France? It was well that France had regained her liberty; but her ally had a right, before going into a war with her against Europe, to see that liberty combined with government and with public force-with national morality, with social order, and with civil manners. All this was wisely deemed by Washington necessary to secure the United States against absolute danger, and to render their alliance at all useful to France. For, on what side were the United States to array themselves? With the king while he yet held the reins of state, or with the National Assembly while abolishing the monarchy? With the ephemeral directories, which governed France through the guillotine, or with the counter-revolutionists, struggling to restore internal peace and repose? Well did Mr. Jefferson say, that if the United States had panted for war as much as ancient Rome-if their armies had been as effective as those of Prussia-if their coffers had been full and their debts annihilated-even then, peace would have been too precious to be put at hazard, in an enterprise with an ally thus deranged and disorganized. And what was the condition of the United States, that they should have periled all in the domestic rage of France and her foreign strife? Mr. Jefferson was no false interpreter, and he thus de |