Читать книгу Essential Writings Volume 1 - William 1763-1835 Cobbett - Страница 10

When we see an unprincipled, shameless bully, “A dog in forehead, and in heart a deer,” who endeavours, by means of a big look, a threatening aspect, and a thundering voice, to terrify peaceable men into a compliance with what he has neither a right to demand, nor power nor courage to enforce, and who, at the same time, acts in such a bungling, stupid manner, as to excite ridicule and contempt in place of fear; when we see such a gasconading, impudent bluff as this (and that we do every day), we call him a Blunderbuss. But, the reader will not, I hope, have conceived me so devoid of all decency and prudence, as to imagine, even for a moment, that it is in this degrading sense that the name of Blunderbuss has been given to the invaluable collection which I here present to the public. Indeed, it is so evident that I could mean no such thing, that this declaration seems hardly necessary; but, as my poor old grandmother used to say, “A burnt child dreads the fire,” and after the unrelenting severities of misconception and misconstruction, that a humane and commiserating public have so often seen me endure, they will think it very natural for me to fear, that what I really intended as a compliment, would, if left unexplained, be tortured into insult and abuse, if not into the horrid crime of lèze-republicanism, at the very idea of which my hair stands on end, and my heart dies within me.

“But,” cry the democrats, “in what sense, then, do you apply the word Blunderbuss? Come, come, Mr. Peter, none of your shuffling.”—Silence, you yelping devils; go, growl in your dark kennel; slink into your straw, and leave me to my reader: I’ll warrant I explain myself to his satisfaction.

Writings of a hostile nature are often metaphorically expressed, in proportion to the noise they make, by different instruments that act by explosion. Thus it is, for instance, that an impotent lampoon is called a Popgun; and that a biting paragraph or epigram, confined to a small circle, is termed a squib; and thus it is, that, rising in due progression, the collection of Citizen Adet’s Notes and Cockade Proclamation is denominated a Blunderbuss, a species of fire-arms that exceeds all others, manageable by a single hand, in the noise of its discharge.

If we pursue the metaphor, we shall find the application still more strikingly happy. The first Note is a kind of preparative for the Cockade Proclamation, and this latter adjusts matters for the grand explosion; or, in the military style,—

Make Ready!

Present!

Fire!

To be sure we are not dead, but this circumstance, instead of mutilating my metaphor, renders it complete; for of all the long list of fire-arms, none is so difficult to adjust, or makes so much noise and smoke, with so little execution, as a Blunderbuss.

This is the first time, I believe, that a Preface ever turned its eyes backwards, and talked about the title till there was no room left to say a word about the book. Indeed the book stands in little need of commendation, or of any thing else, except what I am determined shortly to bestow on it, in a manner worthy of its merits.

In the succeeding number, he answered the charges which it contains against the President and his Government. The paper contains the substance of Adet’s charges, as well as the answer, so that we need not insert the official notes of the French Minister. As this paper closes the affair of the British Treaty, we have taken it a little out of its order in the original work, and shall give in our next number a paper written in answer to attacks on Mr. Cobbett, which, strictly following chronological order, should have come in before this one. The “Remarks” contain one argument which we think will of itself repay the reader; we mean that on the doctrine of allegiance, which is so correctly stated that it would do credit to the soundest lawyer or statesman, as is fully verified by the fact, that numerous decisions have been made by the courts of law in England and America since it was written, all of which agree in the principles here laid down. It is put to the reader in so plain, so forcible, and so eloquent a manner, that, if nothing more, it is a model of good writing, and therefore deserves to be preserved.

To Correspondents.—As nothing is more gratifying than the applause, or profitable than the admonition, of good men, I have reason to congratulate myself on an abundance of both: but as applause ought never to be purchased with money, and as admonition is a commodity that every one is ready to bestow gratis, I must request that future communications of this kind may come to me post free.—I also beg leave to hint to those who give me advice, which they wish I should follow, not to do it in too dictatorial a style; for, if I have any good qualities, docility, I am afraid, is not to be numbered amongst them.

The moment the Gallic usurpers had murdered their sovereign, and, from the vilest walks in life, mounted into his seat, they assumed the tone of masters to the Government of the United States. Their style has softened, it is true; but the general tenor of it has regularly approached towards that loftiest note, that ne plus ultra of insolence, which it attained in Citizen Adet’s last communications.

In offering my sentiments on these arrogant effusions of upstart tyranny, I feel an unusual degree of diffidence: a diffidence that does not arise from any fear I entertain of the citizen or his factious adherents, or even of the “terrible nation,” to use his own words, of which he was lately the worthy representative, but from a consciousness of my inability to do justice to the subject. The keenest satire, were I master of it, would fall blunted from such hardened impudence, such pure unadulterated brass as it would here have to encounter. Terms of reproach are not yet invented, capable of expressing the resentment that every man, who has the least respect for the Government, ought to feel on this occasion.

Thus voluntarily to interfere in a correspondence between a foreign minister and the officers of state, might, under other circumstances, appear rather a bold intrusion; but, the citizen’s having communicated his papers to the people, at the same time, if not before, they reached the Secretary of State, happily precludes the necessity of an apology.

The notes on which I am about to remark, to which, collected together, I affixed the title of Diplomatic Blunderbuss, are intended chiefly to notify to the people of America, that the French rulers are angry with the Federal Government, and that, in consequence of this anger, they have ordered citizen Adet to suspend his functions as minister, till the Government shall alter its conduct, or, in the pedagogue style, mend its manners.

In the 44th page of the Blunderbuss, the citizen makes a recapitulation of the offences that have brought on us this dreadful chastisement, this political excommunication; and it will not appear a little surprising, that some of them have existed ever since the birth of the French Republic, notwithstanding the love and esteem this outlandish lady has ever expressed towards her sister America.

These offences, amounting to seven in number, are as follows:

1. The Federal Government put in question, whether it should execute the treaties, or receive the agents of the rebel and proscribed princes.

2. It made a proclamation of insidious neutrality.

3. By its chicaneries, it abandoned French privateers to its courts of justice.

4. It eluded the amicable mediation of the French Republic for breaking the chains of the American citizens in Algiers.

5. It allowed the French colonies to be declared in a state of blockade, and allowed the citizens of America to be interdicted the right of trading to them.

6. It eluded all the advances made by the French Republic for renewing the treaties of commerce upon a more favourable footing to both nations.

7. It anticipated Great Britain, by soliciting a treaty, in which treaty it prostituted its neutrality; it sacrificed France to her enemies, or rather, looking upon her as obliterated from the chart [map] of the world, it forgot the services she had rendered it, and threw aside the duty of gratitude, as if ingratitude was a governmental duty.

These are the heinous crimes of which the Federal Government stands charged by the sultans of France. Let us now, if they will permit us, examine these crimes, one by one, and see whether the President, and Messrs. Hamilton, Knox, Jay, Pickering and Walcot, really deserve to be guillotined, or not.

“1. The Federal Government put in question, whether it should execute the treaties, or receive the agents of the rebel and proscribed princes.”

The King of France was murdered on the 21st of January, 1793. Information of this event could not be received here much before the 18th of April, and it was on that day the President submitted to his council, the questions of which the above charge forms the substance.

The treaties here spoken of were made with Louis XVI., whose minister, at the time these questions were proposed for consideration, was resident at Philadelphia. The President knew, indeed, that the king was dead; but he, at the same time, knew that the treaties were binding on the United States in behalf of his lawful “heirs and successors,” and he certainly knew that Pétion, Danton, Roland, Clavière, Condorcet, Brissot, and the innumerable horde of bloody usurpers who have come after them, were not those “heirs and successors!” He also knew, that even the whole French nation could not, in the sense of the treaties, become the “heirs and successors” of Louis XVI., and, though treaties, made with a monarch, may remain in force with the nation under a new form of government, yet this is, as most assuredly it ought to be, entirely at the option of the other contracting party. The American government had, therefore, an indisputed right to refuse to execute, in behalf of the French nation, treaties made with their sovereign alone.

If we turn back a little, we shall find this very audacious and unprincipled Convention, whose minister was coming to Philadelphia, publicly deliberating, “whether the treaties, made with the tyrant Louis, were binding on the regenerated nation, or not.” This question was determined in the negative, and accordingly the treaty with Holland was immediately violated. And yet they will not permit the poor Government of America to debate about any such thing, nor even to talk of it in secret, though the result be in their own favour! Let it be remembered, too, that Genet came authorized to make new treaties, a pretty certain proof, that the Convention did not call in question the right of the Government to refuse to adhere to the old ones. It is a proof of more; it is a proof that they expected that it would make the refusal. Would to God their expectation had been realized!

I will not go so far as to say, that the Federal government was fully justified in its decision on this important subject; ^{Ref 060} but I insist that its conduct evinced the utmost partiality for the new Republic. When Genet arrived here, it was far from being ascertained that the whole, or even a majority, of the French nation, approved of the murder of their sovereign, or had abandoned the cause of his successors. The Government of America had, but a few months before, beheld them raising their hands to heaven, and swearing to die, if necessary, in defence of their king. Their constitution, establishing an hereditary monarchy, had been voluntarily formed, and solemnly sanctioned by the whole nation, amidst festivals and Te Deums, and had been officially communicated to the world. Each member of the Assembly, as well as every individual Frenchman, had repeatedly sworn “to maintain this constitution with all his might.” Laws had been made, punishing with transportation all who refused to take the oath, and till then unheard-of cruelties had been exercised on the non-jurors. After all this, was it astonishing that the Federal government should, for a moment, hesitate to believe, that the nation was really become a Republic, and that this constitution, about which there had been so much noise, and rejoicing, and feasting, and singing, and swearing, should be so completely destroyed as to leave neither remnant nor rag visible?

The Government had the interests of America to attend to in this important decision, as well as those of France. A weighty debt was due from this country, not to the regenerated nation nor to its bloodthirsty tyrants, but to Louis XVI., his heirs and successors. A minister from the Republic once admitted, a claim of the interest of the debt could not be refused; and if the volatile and perjured nation had recalled the successor of their sovereign, would not that successor have demanded, and with justice, a second payment of such interest? This has not yet happened, but it does not follow that it might not have happened. In the common affairs of men, he who has been once convicted of perjury, is never after looked upon as credible; and the same rule is applicable to societies.

Republicanism is become, for what reason I know not, synonymous with freedom and happiness, and there are thousands among us who pretend to believe, notwithstanding the terrible example before their eyes, that men cannot be enslaved under a form of government that is called republican. Mr. Adams, in his Defence of the American Constitutions, vol. 1, p. 87, says:

“Our countrymen will never run delirious after a word or a name. The name Republic is given to things in their nature as different and contradictory as light and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, happiness and misery. There are free republics, and republics as tyrannical as an oriental despotism.—

How fully is the truth of these observations exemplified in the republics of America and France! But even this wise and deep-sighted civilian could not imagine that his countrymen would ever run delirious after a name; much less could he imagine, that he should live to see many of them extolling, as the paragon of republics, a system of tyranny that has all the appearance of being an instrument of the wrath of Heaven.

I shall dismiss this first charge against the Government, with observing, that the meanness equals the impudence of making it.

“2. The Government made a proclamation of insidious neutrality.”

This charge is as false as it is rude. I would beg this well-informed and polite citizen, to name one single instance of the insincerity of the Federal government, in enforcing this proclamation. As applied to the conduct of some part of the people, indeed, the neutrality might be called insidious; but then, this insidiousness operated in favour of the French and not against them. There were many who highly approved of the proclamation, and who at the same time actually made war upon the enemies of France. An army of Americans, under the authority of Genet, invaded the Spanish territories, while privateers were fitted out to cruise on the British: cargoes of ammunition and arms were shipped off, and thanksgivings, and other public demonstrations of joy, were heard from one end of the Union to the other. The bells of the good old Christian church, opposite me, fired rounds to celebrate the inundation of the atheistical barbarians into Holland; and the English flag was burnt at Philadelphia, on the public square, as a sacrifice to the goddess of French liberty. These latter circumstances are trifling in themselves, ’tis true, and certainly excited nothing but contempt and ridicule, in the minds of those whom they were intended to insult; but, the question is (and it is to ask this question that they are here mentioned), what would the French, that “terrible nation,” have said, had these insults, these marks of an insidious neutrality, been offered to them? Every opprobrious term in their new-fangled vocabulary would have been heaped on our heads. How many sacrés mâtins, and jean-f—tres, and f—tus chiens, and libertécides, and neutralitécides, would they have called the poor Anglo-Americans, in the course of a Decade!

Where a breach of neutrality, cognizable by the laws, appeared, the Federal government always did its utmost to bring the offenders to justice, and it is for this very reason, that the late diplomatic Mounseer has dared to accuse it of an insidious neutrality. After the proclamation was issued, and Genet saw that there was no hope of setting it aside by inciting the people to rebellion, he feigned an acquiescence, and declared that the Convention did not wish the prosperity of their dear brethren of America to be interrupted by a participation in the war. It entered into his delirious brain, that the proclamation was to be a mere cloak, under which he thought to enlist as many soldiers and arm as many privateers as he could pay for. Such a neutrality would, indeed, have been more advantageous to France than an open declaration of war on the part of the United States; but when he found that the Government was resolved to enforce the proclamation; when he found that his pirates were not permitted to rob and plunder with impunity, and that the American harbours were not to serve them as hiding places, whence they might sally out upon poor old John Bull, as their great predecessor did upon the bevees of Hercules; then he began to foam and sacré Dieu against the libertécide government, for “neutralizing the zeal of the citizens and punishing the generous children of liberty, for flying to the relief of their mother, when she was upon the point of violation by a horde of crowned monsters.”

The only breach of neutrality with which the Federal government can possibly be charged, is, the liquidation of the French debt. This favour, as beneficial to France as it was apparently hazardous to the United States, would have been acknowledged by citizen Adet and his masters, had they not been as ignorant of the law of nations as of the laws of politeness and decency. Citizen Genet, when he opened the negotiation, promised that every farthing of the debt, if liquidated, should be expended in the country, and, for once, I believe, contrary to the German proverb, the Frenchman kept his word; for, except what was retained for the unavoidable daily hire of Poor Richard, and some few other items, I believe every single sous of it went among the Flour Merchants. What think you, Mr. Dallas? Come now, d—n it, tell the truth for once in your life. Be frank with your countrymen, and we’ll make up all old grievances.—Well, you may be as sulky as you please; I believe it; or your friend Fauchet never would have stood, like a bilked cully, with his pocket turned inside out, when he could have purchased a delicious civil war with a few thousand dollars.

But, to return to my subject; whether this liquidation were a breach of neutrality, in a rigorous sense, or not, every real friend of America must rejoice at its being effected. It was one effort towards shaking off a dependence that yet hangs about our necks like a millstone. One of our poets has called a dun “a horrid monster, hated of gods and men.” Exactly such was Genet, when he first arrived, and such would have been his successors, had not the clamorous creditors (or rather claimants) been silenced by a discharge of the debt. This the Government undoubtedly foresaw, and therefore wisely resolved to relieve us from their importunities. But there is another debt of enormous magnitude, that still remains; I mean the debt of gratitude due from this country to the regenerated French. This we shall never liquidate, while there is a Frenchman left to ask, or an American to give. It is incalculable in its amount, and eternal in its duration; we will therefore leave it to pass down the stream of time along with the insidious neutrality.

“3. The Government, by its chicaneries, abandoned French privateers to its courts of justice.”

This is, I tremblingly presume, the “terrible” style, and is therefore looked upon as sufferable in a minister from a “terrible nation;” but I am pretty confident, it would be suffered with impunity in no other. Some writer on the belles lettres, I believe it is Burke, observes, that terror is a property of the sublime, and I am sure that insolence is a property of the terrible. I know not precisely what punishment the law of nations has awarded for such language, but I should imagine it can be nothing short of breaking of bones. A good Irish sheeleley or Devonshire quarter-staff seems much better calculated for answering a charge like this than a pen.—The chicaneries of the Government!—Abandoning privateers to courts of justice!—If this does not deserve a rib-roasting, I do not know what does. If this goes off so, then I say there is no such thing as justice on this side the grave.

Does the general Government of America then act by chicane? Does General Washington, whose integrity, whose inflexible firmness and whose undaunted bravery have been acknowledged and admired as far as his name has reached, merit to be put on a level with a miserable petti-fogger? And is a cause abandoned, because it is submitted to an American court of judicature? Are both judges and juries in this country so very, very corrupt, that no justice can be expected from their decisions? Are we so nearly like Sodom and Gomorrah that twelve honest men are not to be found among us?

An accusation may be so completely absurd and impudent, that no one can attempt to refute it, without sinking, in some degree, towards a level with the accuser; and as I have no inclination to do this, I leave the present one to be answered by the indignation of the reader.

“4. The Government eluded the amicable mediation of the French Republic for breaking the chains of the American citizens in Algiers.”

Every one who recollects the anxiety which the President has ever expressed on the subject of a treaty with Algiers, the innumerable obstacles he had to surmount, and the enormous expense by means of which it was at last effected, need not be told that this charge is as ill-founded as the preceding ones. But as it is intended to bring forward to the people a proof of the friendship of France, at the moment her hatred and hostility are evident to every eye, in this point of view it may be worth while to hear what the citizen has to say in support of it.

He tells us that—

“the French government, zealous of giving to the United States proofs of its attachment, had commenced negotiations with the regency of Algiers, in order to put an end to the war which that power was making on the commerce of the United States:”

That the Minister for Foreign Affairs instructed Fauchet (the very Fauchet who expressed his regret that the Western rebellion did not succeed) to communicate to the Federal government the steps which that of France had taken in this respect, which he did in the following terms, on the 4th of June 1794:—

“I have already had the pleasure, air, to inform you, verbally, of the interest which the committee of public safety of the National Convention had early taken in the truly unhappy situation of your commerce in the Mediterranean.

I now fulfil the duty imposed on me by the Government, by calling to your recollection in writing, the steps which are to be taken by our agent with the Dey of Algiers, for repressing this new manœuvre of the British administration, which has put the finishing stroke to its proofs of malevolence towards free people. The dispatch of the Minister communicating this measure to me, is dated the 5th January 1794, and did not come to my hands till fifteen days ago; I do not yet know by what route; I could have wished it had been less tardy in coming to me, that I might sooner have fulfilled the agreeable task of proving to you by facts, the protestations of friendship of which I have so often spoken in the name of the Republic of France.

The information which I shall receive from Europe in a little time, will doubtless possess me of the success of those negotiations which were to have been opened in January last. If the situation of your affairs is yet such with respect to that barbarous regency, as that our intervention may be of some utility, I pray you to invite the President to cause to be communicated to me the means that he will join to those of the committee of public safety, for the greatest success of the measures already taken. It is in virtue of the express request of the Minister that I solicit of the President some communication on this subject; I shall be satisfied to be able to transmit it by a very early conveyance which I am now preparing for France.”

The Secretary of State replied to him on the 6th June 1794, by a letter of which the following is an extract:—

“Your other letter of the 4th of June, is a powerful demonstration of the interest which the Republic of France takes in our welfare. I will frankly communicate to you our measures and expectations with regard to Algiers; but as you will so soon receive the detail of those measures, which your Government has pursued in our behalf, it will be better perhaps to postpone our interview on this matter, until the intelligence which you further expect shall arrive.”

First, observe here, that Adet tells the people that somebody in France, no matter who, had actually commenced negotiations with the regency of Algiers in behalf of their countrymen. To prove this, he quotes a letter of Fauchet, in which this latter begs to call to the recollection of the Federal Government “the steps which are to be taken,” and not the steps which are taken. Afterwards Fauchet, presuming on what has been done since his latest instructions came away, talks in the very same letter, about measures already taken; but is unable to say any thing about the nature or success of them, until he receives further information from Europe, which he makes no doubt is upon the point of arriving.—Now, is it not very surprising that this further information never came to hand, from that day to this? And is it not still more surprising, that no traces of this friendly mediation, of these steps that were to be taken, and those measures that were already taken, should ever be discovered by the American Envoy to Algiers? When the French do what they can possibly construe into an act of generosity, they are not very apt to keep it hidden from the world, or to suffer the obliged party to remain unreminded of it.

But, let us hear how Master Adet accounts for his worthy predecessor’s receiving no further information relative to this generous interference in our behalf. Fauchet told the Government he was in daily expectation of it, and yet it never came. How will citizen Adet get out of this? We have him fairly hemmed up in a corner here; and he has a devilish deal more wit than I take him to have if he gets himself decently out of it.—He tells us that the French government had taken measures for the relief of the captives, that the mediation was in a charming train, that Fauchet communicated this pleasing intelligence to the President, who waited with anxious expectation for further information, which Fauchet hourly expected to receive, and that

“then Mr. Jay was charged to negotiate with the British government.”

Well, and what then?—Why,

“and then citizen Fauchet did not receive any communication on the subject.”

What?—O, oh! and so then, it seems Mr. Jay’s being appointed to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with King George, prevented the agreeable information, “the facts proving the sincerity of the French protestations of friendship” from being received! and did so completely do away all those steps which were to be taken, and which were taking, and which had already been taken, that they were never after heard of! Surprising, that the United States should have chilled, should have perished even, the zealous interest that France took in their distresses, merely because they wished to avoid still greater distresses by an amicable negotiation elsewhere!

Let us recur to him also. A lie that is bound down to dates is difficult to be successfully kept up.

The committee of public safety (it should have been called the committee of public misery) instructed citizen Fauchet on the 5th of January 1794, to inform the American government that they were about taking means for “breaking the chains of our captive citizens in Algiers.” This “proof of the protestations of their friendship” did not come to Fauchet’s hands till the 4th of the ensuing June, just five months to an hour; and when it did at last arrive, citizen Fauchet could not tell by what route!—A pretty story this, and a pretty sort of ambassador to receive dispatches of such importance, without knowing by whom or by what route. Let Citizen Adet and his worthy predecessor, Father Joseph, go and impose such humbug tales upon the poor stupid enslaved Hollanders and Genevese, they will find few such gulls here.

Again: how could the appointment of Mr. Jay prevent the reception of further information, if such information was daily expected? Robespierre and his bloody colleagues, who felt such a tender concern for the captives, could not hear of this appointment sooner than about two months after it took place; the information promised, as they say, on the 5th of January, must therefore have been on the way; and what then, I would be glad to know, prevented its coming to hand? That it never did come to hand Master Adet has confessed; and we must inevitably conclude therefrom, that it was never either promised on that side of the water, or expected on this.—These dates form a net in which the citizen has hampered himself. He had got the Messidors and the Fructidors into his brains, and could he have got them into ours also, could he have made us adopt the bestial calendar of Poor Richard, we might have lost our account too; but by sticking to the good old June and January we have caught him out.

The motive for advancing the charge at this time is, to instil into the minds of the people, that the President felt extremely indifferent as to the fate of the captives. This base, this calumnious, this insufferably insolent insinuation, I leave to the resentment of those for whose sake he has undergone every toil and every hardship, has a thousand times ventured his life, and, what is more, has patiently borne the viperous bite of ingratitude.

“5. The Government allowed the French colonies to be declared in a state of blockade, and allowed the citizens of America to be interdicted the right of trading to them.”

It is a wonder citizen Adet did not swell the list here. He might, with equal reason, have complained that the Federal government allowed the British to conquer the half of these colonies; that they allowed Lords Howe, Hood, and Bridport, to destroy their fleets; and that they allowed Prince Charles to beat and pursue their boasting army. He might have complained, that they are about to allow the sans-culotte General Moreau to be Burgoyned, and the ruffian Buonaparte and his wolfish comrades to leave their lank carcasses in Italy, which I hope and believe will be allowed. Had he complained that they allowed it to rain, to snow, and to thunder, his complaint would not have been more absurd than it now is.

But the Government also allowed “the American citizens to be interdicted the right of trading to these colonies.”—As to the power of preventing this, the same may be said as of the prohibitions above supposed; and as to the right of preventing it, if the power had existed, nothing can be said, unless we knew the exact state of the blockades to which the citizen alludes, but of which his Blunderbuss gives no particular account.

When a place or an island is actually invested in such a manner as to enable the besieger to prevent neutrals from entering, he has a right, according to the immemorially established law of nations, not only to exercise this power of prevention, but to seize on and confiscate both goods and vessels, and even to inflict corporal punishment on all those who transgress his prohibition. ^{Ref 061} That the British have sometimes declared places in a state of siege which were not really invested has often been asserted, but never proved; but it is well known, on the other hand, that they never went to the rigour of the law of nations with those who had the temerity to disregard their prohibitions, in attempting to enter places which were completely blockaded.

Numerous complaints of captures, made at the entrance of the ports of an island, amount to a pretty strong presumptive proof that the captor has formed an actual investiture. If he has done this, he certainly has a right to declare it; and it follows, of course, that no neutral power has a right to take offence at his declaration. When one of the neutral captains complained that the British intercepted and seized on every vessel that attempted to enter the port of St. Pierre’s, and, in the very same letter, inveighed against the illegality of their declaring the place in a state of blockade, he talked like a good honest tar: and when we hear a public minister echoing the complaint we may pardon his ignorance, but we cannot help wishing, at the same time, that he had been sent to hand, reef and steer, stew up lobscous, or swab the deck, rather than to pester us with his boorish grumbling and tarpauling logic.

Where a merchant, or a mariner, through love to the besieged, or hatred to the besieger, through avarice or through indiscretion, has lost his property by an endeavour to elude the prohibition of trading to a blockaded place, it is very natural, and therefore perhaps excusable, in him to be vociferous in complaint against the injustice of the captor; but it is not quite so natural or excusable in his government to participate in his resentment, and plunge the nation into a war to avenge him. Were the harmony of nations to be disturbed by the passions of individuals, peace must take her flight to heaven, for she would never find a resting place on the face of the earth.

It is, however, certain that very many of the captures made by the British cruisers were contrary to the law of nations, and therefore called for the interposition of the general Government. And has not that Government interposed? Yes; and so effectually too, that a mode of indemnification, as equitable and as honourable as either party could wish for, has been firmly settled on. Supposing then, for a moment, that France had a right to make inquiries on the subject, what more does she want? Strange as it may seem to those who are inattentive to the intrigues of this at once volatile, ferocious, and artful republic, it is the success of the negotiation by which this very indemnification was obtained that has occasioned the charge now preferred by her minister! The French, or rather the French usurpers, rejoiced at the British depredations on the commerce of this country; nothing was farther from their wishes than to see the sufferers indemnified. They were in hopes of a rupture being produced between Britain and America, and they are now foaming at their disappointment.

To this charge respecting blockades and the seizure of American vessels may be added that which citizen Adet makes with regard to the impressment of seamen from on board of those and other vessels.

The complaint against British impressments has so often been the subject of public debate and private animadversion that it would seem unnecessary to dwell on it here; yet, as I do not recollect ever having seen it placed in a fair point of view, to attempt doing it at this time can be productive of no harm.

The impressed seamen were of two descriptions, British subjects and American subjects, or (if my readers like the term better) American citizens. This distinction is a very important one, because on it totally depends the legality or illegality of the impressment.

It is an established and universally acknowledged principle, that, to the lawful sovereign power of the state, or, in other words, the state itself in which a man is born, he owes allegiance to the day of his death, unless exempted therefrom by the consent of that sovereign power. ^{Ref 062} This principle is laid down by nature herself, and is supported by justice and general policy. A man, who is not dead to every sentiment that distinguishes him from the brute, feels himself attached to his native land by ties but very little weaker than those which bind him to his parents, and he who can deny the one will make little scruple of denying the other. For the truth of the former remark I appeal to the heart of my reader, and for the truth of the latter to his daily observation.—Who would not regard as a monster the ungrateful wretch that should declare he was no longer the son of his father? And yet this is but one step from pretending to shake off his allegiance to his country. Such declarations may be made, but the debt of duty and allegiance remains undiminished.

And is it not just that the state which has bred, nourished, and protected you, should have a title to your allegiance? A fool might say, as I heard a philosophical fool lately say, with Godwin’s Political Justice in his hand, “I could not avoid being born in your state.” But, ungrateful fool, the state might have avoided sheltering you under its wings, and suffering you to grow up to manhood. It might have expelled you the society, cast you out to live among the beasts, or have thrown you into the sea, had it not been withheld by that law, that justice, which now sanctions its claim on your allegiance. To say that you “never asked for protection,” is the same thing as to say that you never asked to be born. Had your very first cry been a renunciation of protection, it would not have invalidated the claim of the state; for you were protected in your mother’s womb. Should the state now withdraw its protection from you, and leave you to the mercy of the plunderer and assassin, or drive you out from its boundaries, without any forfeiture on your part, would you not exclaim against such a step as an act of brutal injustice? And yet this is no more unjust than for you to withdraw your allegiance, cast the state from you, and leave it to the mercy of its foes. The obligation here is perfectly reciprocal; as the state cannot, by its own arbitrary will, withhold that protection which is the birthright of every individual subject, so no subject can, by his arbitrary will, alienate that allegiance which is the right of the state.

The general policy, too, the mutual interest of nations in supporting this principle is so evident, that nothing but the influence of the wild and barbarian doctrines of the regenerated French can account for its having been disputed.—If men could alienate their allegiance at pleasure, they could also transfer it at pleasure; and then into what confusion would not mankind be plunged? Where should we look for the distinctive mark of nations, and where find the standard of right and of duty?

Let us illustrate the excellence of this policy by an example of what might result from its contrary, and at the same time bring the question home to America.—It is very natural that the people of this country should wish to draw the seamen from other countries and claim them as hers, but let us see how this doctrine would suit when brought into operation against herself.—Suppose a war (which God forbid!) should break out between America and Great Britain, and that some of the citizens or subjects of these states should be found on board the enemy’s vessels making war upon their country; in this case America would have no right to punish them, according to the new doctrine, if they declared that they had transferred their allegiance to Britain. We may bring the evil still nearer to our doors, and assert that even deserters to an enemy, landed in the country, would also claim exemption from punishment. It will not do to say that this would be treason. If allegiance be transferrable, the transfer may take place for all purposes, at all times, and in all places; for war as well as for peace; in the hour of danger as well as in the hour of security; on this side of the sea as well as on the other; in the camp as well as in the city. This wild doctrine once established, treason would become a duty, or rather there could be no such thing as a traitor in the world. The barriers of society would be broken into shivers; the discontented of every community would be tempted, and would moreover have a right, to abandon, betray, and make war upon their country.

Applying what has been said to the complaint now before us, we shall find that the people residing in these States at the time their independence was acknowledged, and that those who have been born in them since that time, are not subjects of Great Britain; and that all who have emigrated from the dominions of Great Britain since that epoch are her subjects. ^{Ref 063} It is very certain that nearly all the impressed seamen were of this latter description, and were therefore still subject to the laws of their country and the regulations of their sovereign, when found in any part of his or his enemy’s dominions, or upon the high seas. These regulations authorized his officers to impress them, and therefore they were impressed. That their impressment was frequently a very great loss to their employers might be subject of regret; but the Government of the United States had no more right to complain of it than that of Britain had to complain of their being employed.

The heathenish French are certainly the last people in the world to hold up as an example to Christian nations; but, where their practice is so exactly contrary to the principles they pretend to profess, it is worth noticing. Let it be observed, then, that they have taken thousands of their emigrants, without the limits of their territory, who had renounced their protection, yet every soul of them was put to the sword; not as Austrians, English, or Dutch, but as Frenchmen, who still owed allegiance, and as such were dealt with as traitors. Now, I humbly request the citizen minister of the “terrible” bloody nation to tell me, what claim France had to the allegiance of these emigrants, if Britain had none to her emigrated sailors?

But, to come still closer to the point; the French seized several of their emigrants without arms in their hands, on the high seas, pursuing their peaceable commerce, on board of neutral vessels too, yea even on board of American vessels. Every man of these they also put to death: some they dragged on shore to the guillotine, others they threw into the sea alive, and others they hewed down with their sabres. Therefore, unless citizen Adet will frankly declare, like a good full-blooded sans-culotte, that it is justifiable for a nation to claim the allegiance and seize on the persons of its emigrants only for the purpose of cutting their throats, I must insist that the practice of his nation gives the lie direct to the principle on which his charge is founded.

I now come to the other description of impressed seamen: those who owed allegiance to America alone. And here I frankly declare, that I believe many acts of rudeness, insolence, and even tyranny, have been committed by particular officers; for there are some of them that would press their own mothers, if they were capable of standing before the mast. But I can never credit all the lamentable stories that the hirelings of France have so industriously propagated on this subject. After a most piteous and pitiful picture of the distresses of the impressed seamen, drawn by that able painter, the taper-limbed and golden-hued Adonis of New York, who has been aptly enough compared to a poplar tree in autumn; after as vigilant and spiteful an inquiry as ever was prosecuted by the spirit of faction, not more than five or six impressed seamen, of the description we are now speaking of, could be named; and with respect to these, the report of the Secretary of State proved that, where proper application had been made for their enlargement, it had always been immediately attended to, and had produced the desired effect.

It was in the course of this memorable investigation that the generous Mr. Livingston proposed to furnish the British seamen, on board American vessels, with certificates of naturalization. These were intended to operate as a charm on the paws and bludgeons of the English press-gangs, or at least it is difficult to conceive for what other purpose they were intended. Was there any man in Congress fool enough to imagine that the just claims of one nation could be annulled by the production of bits of sealed paper given to her subjects by another nation? The particular act, or the general law, by which foreigners are naturalized, may admit them to a participation in all the privileges and immunities enjoyed by the citizens of the state adopting them (which is, indeed, the sole end of naturalization), but can never weaken the claim of the parent state; otherwise traitors and deserters, by producing certificates of naturalization, might bid defiance to the just vengeance of their injured country.

As to the measures taken by the Federal government relative to the impressed seamen, they were such as the peculiar situation of America rendered wise. Mr. Jay endeavoured to obtain a stipulation, by which British seamen, found on board American vessels, would have been exempted from the operation of the impress orders. This Great Britain refused, for the same reason that nations, as well as individuals, generally refuse to make a gratuitous sacrifice of what belongs to them. Agents have since been appointed to attend to impressments, and when their interposition is warranted by the state of the case, there is every appearance that it will be productive of the end proposed, and that both parties will readily co-operate for the preservation of harmony.

Dismissing this charge respecting impressed seamen, the length of my observations on which I am afraid has wearied my reader, I proceed to the remaining ones, on which I promise to be more concise.

“6. The Federal Government eluded all the advances made by the French Republic for renewing the treaties of commerce upon a more favourable footing to both nations.”

What does this learned citizen mean by treaties of commerce? This country has but one treaty of commerce with France: the other is a treaty “eventual and defensive.” Perhaps, indeed, he may regard war as a species of commerce; and it must be allowed that this is the only commerce that can be carried on with this terrible republic at present. The kind of trucking commerce that she is carrying on in Italy, where she purchases a statue or a picture with the lives of ten thousand soldiers, may, to her, be advantageous enough, because she is a rich lady and a virtuoso; but to America, who is a plain homely dame, and has but little taste for such fine things, this commerce has but few charms: to her, one live farmer is of higher estimation than all the heroes and gods of antiquity.

I rather think, however, that citizen Adet, ignorant as he may be, knows that a defensive treaty is not a treaty of commerce; and if so, he must know that there is but one treaty of commerce between the countries. But there were two treaties to be renewed, and, as it has always been held up to the people here, that their dear friends of France did not wish their prosperity to be interrupted by taking a part in the war, it would not do to talk about renewing a defensive treaty; that would have smelt of powder; yet he could not say, that the treaty of commerce only was proposed to be renewed, and so he has called them both treaties of commerce. The citizen was hemmed in between a lie and an absurdity, and, to the credit of his morality, he has chosen the latter.

That the ground-work of a new treaty, or a renewed treaty, with France, was to be our going to war with her enemies, has been so often and so incontestably proved, that the fact is now universally acknowledged, except by the stipendiaries of that pure-principled republic. But, were a proof yet wanting, citizen Adet has furnished it, in the last page of his Diplomatic Blunderbuss. Here he tells us, that both Genet and Fauchet used their utmost to draw the Government into a negotiation, but in vain; that it eluded all their friendly overtures. Yes, and so it did indeed; just as the sheep eludes the friendly overtures of the wolf, and for much about the same reason.

“On this subject the President authorized the Secretary of State, who explained to the undersigned the manner in which they could proceed in it. But at what time? When the ratification of the treaty concluded between Lord Grenville and Mr. Jay no longer permitted the undersigned to pursue that negotiation.”

And why not? Why not go on, man? If you had nothing to propose but “treaties of commerce, upon a footing more favourable to both nations,” how could the treaty with Great Britain prevent the pursuit of your negotiation? The reason is plain: this treaty had happily put an end to all the disputes between America and Britain, and left you no room to hope that your negotiation would rekindle the embers of discord.

The only question for the people to determine, then, is, not whether they wished the treaties to be renewed, but whether they wished for war or not; and this question they have already determined in the negative.

Thank God, we are at last come to the closing article of accusation.

“7. The Federal Government anticipated Great Britain by soliciting a treaty, in which treaty it prostituted its neutrality; it sacrificed France to her enemies, or rather, looking upon her as obliterated from the chart [map] of the world, it forgot the services she had rendered it, and threw aside the duty of gratitude, as if ingratitude was a governmental duty.”

This is a complicated charge, comprising the crimes of meanness, prostitution, treachery and ingratitude. The meanness of “anticipating Great Britain by soliciting a treaty,” shall not detain us long. When two nations form a treaty, it is clear that one or the other must make the first overtures, or the business could never be begun, and consequently never ended. I believe, therefore, that making the first proposition for a treaty, and particularly a treaty of commerce, was never before construed into an act of meanness. As for soliciting, this word, by which the citizen wishes to convey an insinuation that Mr. Jay was haughtily received, at first rejected, and at last obliged to approach with humiliating condescension, nothing can be farther from the truth. His business was, to demand reparation of the wrongs sustained by America. When these were made known, Great Britain had her wrongs to oppose to them. Both parties were, as their interests dictated, equally desirous of an accommodation; and this desire was productive of a treaty, settling all old disputes, and making provisions for the avoiding of new ones. Now, I pray, in this simple and natural process, what is there to be discovered of meanness or humble solicitation?

The charge proceeds to assert, that the Government “prostituted its neutrality, and sacrificed France to her enemies.” This is too vague to be taken up as it lies before us; except, indeed, it be the word prostituted, which may be dismissed at once, by observing, that it must have been picked up in the purlieus of the Palais-Royal, a place of which the Irish-Town of Philadelphia is a picture in miniature. To avoid the indecency therefore of joining it with the American government, I shall supply its place by the words gave up.

What the polite citizen chiefly alludes to, then, in saying, that the Government gave up its neutrality and sacrificed France to her enemies, is, that article of the British treaty which contains the stipulation respecting an enemy’s goods, found on board the vessels of the United States, when these latter are neutral, with respect to Great Britain.

The stipulation of the treaty which we are about to examine, in substance says, that an enemy’s goods found on board the vessels of the contracting parties, shall be looked upon as lawful prize. This, says citizen Adet, is a violation of the modern law of nations; and this, says the Government, is no such thing. As here is a flat contradiction, somebody must tell a lie; who it is I know not, but I am sure it is not the Government at any rate.

Now, with respect to commerce with an enemy, whoever examines the best writers on the subject, will find that, long since these nations assumed nearly their present relative state, it was the general practice to prohibit all trade whatever with an enemy. ^{Ref 064}

As the nations grew more polished, and as their relations increased by means of maritime commerce, the rigour of this practice was gradually softened, till confiscation was at last confined to the vessels and property of enemies, to certain articles termed contraband of war, and to the property of enemies found on board of neutral vessels.

Thus far the relaxation became pretty general about the time of Queen Elizabeth. But some powers wished to extend the freedom of commerce still further; even so far as to protect enemies’ goods found on board of neutral vessels; and to do this the Queen of England was one of the first to assert her right. The right was, however, disputed, and that too by the United Provinces, even before their independence was fully assured. They took some of her vessels laden with Spanish property, and condemned the cargoes, without paying freightage. The Queen at first resented this conduct in an infant state that was chiefly indebted to her for support; but, notwithstanding the well-known tenacity and imperiousness of her disposition, her wisdom and justice prevailed, and she at last acquiesced in the legality of the captures. Here then we have an instance of the practice of a nation of modern birth, a republic also, and a republic engaged in a revolutionary war.

I have at least a hundred examples of this nature now before me. But let us descend to still more modern times, and that the example may be, if possible, yet more strikingly applicable, let us appeal to the practice of the French nation itself. The famous Ordinance of 1681, which might be called the navigation act of France, expressly declared to be good prize, not only the enemy’s goods on board of a neutral vessel, but the neutral vessel also.

We are now got down to the close of the last century; but as that may not be quite modern enough for our Decadery Mounseer, let us continue to descend, still continuing our appeal to the practice of his own country. The Ordinance of 1681 was mitigated by successive treaties, in which France, according as her interest prescribed, refused, or granted, the permission which citizen Adet now sets up as a right: but, after these treaties, and even so late as 1757, she declared to the republic of Holland, that if any goods belonging to her enemy were found on board of Dutch vessels, such goods should be condemned as good prize, and to this declaration her practice was conformable, during the whole war which ended in 1763, only thirty-three years ago. So that, unless this man of the “New Style” will absolutely sans-culotte us, and insist upon it that our fathers were antediluvians, and that we ourselves were born in the ages of antiquity, we must insist, on our part, that the principle adhered to in the treaty between Great Britain and America, is a principle of the modern law of nations, and moreover is sanctioned by the practice of France.

The fact is, this principle is either adopted, or not adopted, according to the interests and situations of the contracting parties: as these vary, nations act differently at different times and towards different nations. It is a matter merely conventional, and solely dependent on circumstances, as much as any other stipulation of a treaty.

The citizen has one more fetch; which I think is the most impudent piece of sophistry that ever was attempted to be palmed upon a nation. A nation, did I say! Why, a nation of Indians would have tomahawked him, and we should now see his skin hanging up in the shops for sale, had he offered to chouse them in such a barefaced manner.——I allude to that part of his Blunderbuss, where he says, that America violated her treaty with France, by granting to Britain the favour of seizure, which she had not granted to France, though she was to be treated in the same manner as “the most favoured nation.”

The sophistry of this consists in confounding favour with right, terms almost as opposite in signification as right and wrong.——America conferred no favour, when, by treaty, she declared that Great Britain should seize enemies’ goods on board of her vessels: she only acknowledged the existence of Great Britain’s right so to do. Nor was this acknowledgment absolutely necessary: but, some nations having retained the exercise of the right, and others having relinquished it; it was a prudent precaution against future disputes, to declare, by express stipulation, whether it was retained or relinquished in the present instance.

The stipulation for equal favour then, which is to be found in most treaties of commerce now existing in the world, extends to the effects of the municipal laws and regulations of the contracting parties. It implies an equality in duties, in tonnage, in the permission to have consuls; all which, and many others, may properly be called favours: but, it can never be construed to extend to any one of the great rights of national sovereignty. If this were the case, all the advantageous stipulations of a treaty made with one power, would be applicable to every other power, in a treaty with which this usual stipulation for equal favour was found: and of this we shall see the monstrous absurdity in a minute.——America, for instance, has treaties with Spain, Great Britain, and France, in all which the stipulation for equal favour exists. In the treaty with Spain, America allows to that nation a free navigation on the American part of the Mississipi; but does she allow this to Britain and France? In that with Great Britain, America allows her a free navigation and trade on her river, lakes, &c. and Britain allows the same freedom to America on hers; but does either of them extend this permission to France or Spain, or any other nation? Yet they are obliged to do this, if the stipulation for equal favour admits of the construction, which the maritime Goths wish to impose on us, in support of their attack on the commerce of America.

Thus have I had patience to go through the mock charges, which the despots of France have dared to prefer against the free, equitable, and beneficent Government of America. I shall take the liberty of adding a few miscellaneous observations, which would be dispensed with, fearing the reader is already too much fatigued, did not the crisis of affairs seem to demand them now, or never.

The first thing that calls, and most loudly calls, for reprobation, is, the contemptuous manner in which the Frenchman treated the Government, by communicating his Notes to the people, at the same time, or before, they were received by the President.

The sole right of making communications of this nature to the people of a state, so evidently belongs to its government, and is so essential to the very existence of every government, that it is not surprising that the first violation of it should have been reserved for the heathenish French. Former barbarians ever respected this right: the laws of decency had some influence on their uncultivated minds; but the barbarians, or rather the savages, of Paris, have set those and all other laws human and divine, at defiance. They seem to look upon themselves as the children of the devil, and to have assumed, in virtue of their father, the right of prowling about the earth, disturbing the peace of mankind, by scattering the seeds of rebellion and bloodshed.

Their agents have long been practising their fiend-like temptations on the people of this country. They have proceeded from one degree of malice to another, till at last their late minister Adet (for whom I wish I could find a name worse than his own) makes a direct attempt to inflame the people against the Government. After telling them, that the Convention has ordered their vessels to be seized (contrary to treaty), he proceeds:

“And now, if the execution of these measures gives rise to complaints in the United States, it is not against France they should be directed, but against those men, who have entered into negotiations contrary to the interests of their country.”

Just as if he had said, pointing to the President, the Senate, and Officers of State: ‘There they are; rise on them, cut their throats, and choose others more pliant to our will.’—His words do not amount to this, ’tis true; but in his country a hint far less intelligible would have been perfectly understood, and would not have failed of the desired effect. Happily he was not haranguing a Parisian mob. Whatever foolish partiality some of us may have had, and may yet have for France, nature has been so kind as not to make us Frenchmen.

In the reign of Queen Anne, when a Tory Ministry, aided by an intriguing Frenchman, were treating for a separate peace with Louis XIV., the Imperial Minister, Count Gallas, in order to prepossess the people of England against the peace, caused the transaction to be published, as an article of news, in one of the daily papers. This step, though it could not be looked upon as an appeal to the people, was so much resented by the Queen, that she ordered him to quit the kingdom immediately; and in this she was supported by the unanimous voice of the nation; who, notwithstanding they disapproved of a peace which was to sacrifice the great advantages obtained by their arms under the immortal Duke of Marlborough, justly and manfully resented the attempt of a foreign minister to step in between them and their own sovereign, however blamable her measures might be.

Such is the situation of America with respect to the insidious, unprincipled, insolent, and perfidious Republic of France; and it only remains for the virtue and public spirit of the people to determine what sort of answer ought to be given to her presumptuous and domineering minister. Let it be well remembered, that the notes containing his calumnious accusations, his contemptuous defiance and hectoring threats, are not the effusions of a paragraphist or a pamphleteer: they are the official communications of a public minister, thrown in the teeth of the nation. In less than two months they will be read and commented on by half the civilized world. Those who know the American character will not be deceived; but far the greater part will set us down as a nation of sharpers or poltroons, who have either not honesty to support our reputation, or not courage to defend it. If there be a man who, with this reflection on his mind, can wish the Government to stoop, and cringe, and sue and beg for peace, to court a repetition of the buffet that yet tingles in our cheek, he may boast about independence, he may even call himself a patriot, but his independence is an empty sound; and he knows no more of the animating glow of patriotism, where affection, duty, and honour unite, than the slave knows of the charms of liberty, or the eunuch of the sweets of love. No; the answer of every man who loves his country, and feels the insult it has received, yet prefers the blessings of honourable peace to the inevitable calamities of war, is, in the words of a good old English king that conquered France and all that France contained;

“The sum of all our answer is but this:

We would not seek a battle as we are;

Yet, as we are, we say we will not shun it:

And so go tell your masters, Frenchman.”

end of remarks on the blunderbuss.