Читать книгу Essential Writings Volume 1 - William 1763-1835 Cobbett - Страница 8

Or, Observations on a Pamphlet entitled, “A Vindication of Mr. Randolph’s Resignation.”

“For gold defiles by frequent touch;

There’s nothing fouls the hand so much.

But as his paws he strove to scower,

He washed away the chemic power;

And Midas now neglected stands,

With ass’s ears and dirty hands.”

Note by the Editors.—The pamphlet now before us relates to the detection of a corrupt Secretary of State, to whom we have alluded in the Preface, and also in the note preceding the “Little Plain English;” but there is a circumstance connected with it that we must explain to the reader. He will see a constant reference to the “Western Insurrection,” and, as that does not explain itself, we must do it here. Late in 1794, four of the western counties of Pennsylvania broke out into open revolt in consequence of an excise on spirits which was levied within them. It became so alarming that an army was raised to quell it; but Washington’s Government was foiled in its attempts to raise the militia for the purpose. They would not come out. Mifflin, the Governor of Pennsylvania, and Dallas, his Secretary, were thought to be supine in their duties; but it remained for the discovery on which “the New Year’s Gift” is a commentary to show precisely why they were so. The insurrection was quelled without fighting; but, at the outbreak of it, the secretary of state, Randolph, made overtures to the French Minister, which amounted to a treasonable conspiracy to overthrow the Government; it involved others as well as himself, and it was discovered by one of those miracles which bring treachery to light, and was made known to Washington on the 11th August 1795. The discovery was made just in the heat of the conflict of parties concerning the British Treaty. It gave a blow to the French party, and great strength to the President and the friends of England, and, indeed, the adoption of the Treaty was attributed to this affair. Randolph retired instantly on the discovery, but was suffered to go unpunished into retirement. The “New-Year’s Gift” is an answer to a pamphlet in which he attempted a vindication of himself. It is so clear and convincing an exposure of fallacies, and is so good a picture of the difficulties which surrounded Washington’s Government; it is so clear a proof that its author was not, as is represented by foolish and malignant men, an insane “Royalist, libelling the Federal Government and its founders,” but, rather, that he supported that Government and upheld its founders against a band of traitors; this is so clear, that we place it in our Selections. At the time of writing it, Mr. Cobbett was still unknown, but he says (Pore. vol. 4, p. 122), “Bradford (his publisher) told me he had read some pages of the ‘New Year’s Gift’ to two of the Senators, who were mightily pleased with it and laughed heartily; and he related a conversation that had taken place between him and Mr. Wolcot, the present Secretary of the Treasury, who assured him, that some of the officers of Government did intend to write an answer to Randolph’s Vindication, but that my New-Year’s Gift had done its business so completely that nothing further was necessary. He added that they were all exceedingly delighted with my productions.” In our note to “Plain English,” we said that Randolph was suggested to the President for the Secretaryship by Jefferson. This we gather from the Anas, in the fourth volume of the Life of Jefferson, p. 506, where he gives a conversation between the President and himself, upon his retiring from the office of Secretary, in these words: “I asked him whether some person could not take my office par interim, till he should make an appointment; as Mr. Randolph for instance. ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘but there you would raise an expectation of keeping it, and I do not know that he is fit for it, nor what is thought of Mr. Randolph.’ I avoided noticing the last observation, and he put the question to me directly. Then I told him, I went into society so little as to be unable to answer it: I knew that the embarrassment in his private affairs had obliged him to use expedients which had injured him with the merchants and shopkeepers, and affected his character of independence.” Jefferson remained some time after in office and then retired, when Randolph was appointed. The surprising thing is, that Jefferson could not think of a fitter man in all America to succeed him than Randolph appears to have been; but it is very evident that he bore ill-will towards Washington. In a letter to Mr. Giles (Life &c. vol. 3, p. 325), he observes on the address and answer at the opening of Congress in 1795, “I remark, in the reply of the President, a small travestie of the sentiment contained in the answer of the representatives. They acknowledge that he has contributed a great share to the national happiness by his services. He thanks them for ascribing to his agency a great share of those benefits. The former keeps in view the co-operation of others towards the public good. The latter presents to view his sole agency:” a piece of hypercriticism that shows what jealousies were at work within him; for really, if one examines it, Washington’s answer was a modest echo of the address. It says he had contributed a great share (by-the-by, Jefferson is guilty of worse than travestie, for the words of the address are “contributed a very great share”); that is, he had been a great contributor, whereas he only assumes to have been an agent in the work of bestowing benefits on his country. The general meaning of the word agency is, acting in behalf of another; so that Washington assumed a lower station than the address ascribed to him. In the same letter, which is dated 31st December 1795, he speaks of Randolph, and of his pamphlet, which he had just received from his correspondent, in these extraordinary terms: “I thank you much for the pamphlet. His narrative is so straight and plain, that even those who did not know him will acquit him of the charge of bribery. Those who knew him had done it from the first.” No man who reads the following pamphlet can think as Mr. Jefferson did of this offender, and indeed it is hardly to be believed that Randolph’s pamphlet could have imposed any such belief upon his mind. It is curious, too, to observe the discrepancy between the passage just quoted and that which we take from the Anas. In the latter, it is clear that Washington suspected Randolph, and that he sounded Jefferson to find if he did not. Jefferson says that he avoided the question; and on being pressed more home upon it, he goes “so little into society as to be unable to answer it;” and yet only about a twelvemonth afterwards, on receiving Randolph’s pamphlet, he vouches that “those who knew him had acquitted him from the first,” leaving his correspondent to suppose, that, if he did not know Randolph himself, he at any rate knew all those who did, and could rely upon their opinions.

Among the means employed by the anarchical assemblies of France, in the propagation of their detestable principles, that of corruption may be regarded as one of the most powerful, and, accordingly, it has ever shared a principal part of their attention. If we take a survey of their confiscations, proscriptions and assassinations, from the seizure of the property of the ecclesiastics, by the constituent assembly, down to the horrid butcheries of Carrier, we shall find that this has often been a leading motive for the perpetrating of those deeds, which will blacken the French name as long as honesty and humanity shall be esteemed amongst men. It is, at least, an object of which they have never lost sight, and which they have spared nothing to accomplish. They have ransacked the coffers of the rich, stripped poverty of its very rags, robbed the infant of its birth-right, wrenched the crutch from the hand of tottering old age, and, joining sacrilege to burglary, have plundered even the altars of God, in order to possess themselves of the means of corrupting degenerate foreigners.

That their plans of seduction have been but too successful they themselves avow. Like the gang of highwaymen in the subterraneous cave, each mounts the polluted tribune in his turn, and tells his tale of corruption. According to their own acknowledgments, they have expended millions upon millions in this commerce of consciences, since they have called their country a Republic; and, which is well worthy of remark, these immense sums have all been expended, with a trifling exception, in the Republican States that have condescended to fraternize with them. The patriots of Geneva and Holland, of Genoa and Switzerland, have been bought with the treasures extorted from the unhappy French. The two former states are, in every political point of view, annihilated, and the two latter exist as a proof, that states, as well as individuals may sometimes triumph in successful baseness and vanity. ^{Ref 045}

The people of the United States of America had not the mortification to see their country included in the dark catalogue; and though it was evident to every discerning man, that some such influence began to prevail, in different parts of the Union, soon after the arrival of citizen Genet; though it was impossible to account for the foundation of the democratic clubs, and for the countenance they received from many persons of weight and authority (particularly in the State of Pennsylvania, where the Secretary of the State was at the head of the mother club) upon any other principle; though people were daily seen acting in direct opposition to their apparent interests; and though the partisans of France did not hesitate openly to declare their enmity to the President of the United States and to the Government he had been chosen to administer; notwithstanding all these striking and well-known facts, the great body of the people would have regarded any one as a slanderer of their national character, who should have insinuated, that the secrets of their Government, and their most important interests, were the price of that sudden exaltation that every where appeared among the persons devoted to the will of the French Minister. The people might have remained in this delusive confidence, till their constitution had been subverted, and till they had been plunged into a calamitous foreign war, or driven to the dire necessity of shedding each other’s blood, had it not been for the accidental interception of the letter, that has led to the vindication on which I have here undertaken to make a few observations.

Before I enter on the vindication itself, two circumstances present themselves as subjects of preliminary observation: the time and the manner of its being introduced to the public.

Mr. Randolph informs us that he gave in his resignation on the 19th of August, in consequence of his having been interrogated on the contents of an intercepted letter of the French minister, citizen Fauchet; and we all know that his Vindication, if vindication it must be, did not appear till the 18th of December, a space of exactly four months, wanting one day. When he had given in his resignation, he did not remain at Philadelphia to court the inquiry that he talks so much of, but flew away to Rhode-Island, in order to overtake Mr. Fauchet, by whose very letter he stood accused, and to obtain from him a certificate of his innocence and morality. We shall see by-and-by how he was employed during his stay at Rhode-Island; at present we must follow him back to Philadelphia, where we find him arrived on the 21st of September, thirty-three days after his departure, and writing to the President of the United States, to inform him that he is preparing his vindication with all imaginable dispatch; and of this he had taken care to inform the public several days before. After this notification, it was impossible that the people should not hourly expect to see in the public papers an elucidation of the whole affair. What then must be their astonishment, when after having waited with the utmost impatience for three long weeks, they were given to understand that the boasting vindicator could not close his laborious performance without having access to certain other papers of a confidential nature? The request for these papers, all evasive and malicious as it was, was at once granted by the President. Hence the idle tales of a British faction.

It was probable, too, that by delaying the publication till after the meeting of Congress, it might be brought out at a moment when some decision of that body respecting the treaty might irritate the feelings of the people against the President’s conduct; and by directing their attention to that part of the vindication intended to criminate him, might turn the shaft of their censure from the vindicator himself.

Nor shall we find that the manner of his introducing his vindication to the public speaks more in his favour.

In this letter of resignation, he says to the President:—

“I am satisfied, sir, that you will acknowledge one piece of justice on this occasion, which is, that until an inquiry can be made, the affair shall continue in secrecy under your injunction.”

But after his return from Rhode-Island, knowing that the President could not lay an injunction for the time past, and knowing also that a copy of the dreadful dispatch was in the hands of Mr. Bond, ^{Ref 046} on whom the President could lay no injunction at all, he suspected the affair had got abroad, which was indeed the case; it was then, and not before, that, making a virtue of necessity, he informed the public, by publishing a letter he had written to the President, that he would prepare a vindication of his conduct.

After this he suffered the matter to rest for some time, and then published an extract from another letter to the President, dated the 8th of October, in the following words:—

“You must be sensible, sir, that I am inevitably driven into the discussion of many confidential and delicate points. I could with safety immediately appeal to the people of the United States, who can be of no party. But I shall wait for your answer to this letter, so far as it respects the paper desired, before I forward to you my general letter, which is delayed for no other cause. I shall also rely that you will consent to the whole of this affair, howsoever confidential and delicate, being exhibited to the world. At the same time, I prescribe to myself this condition, not to mingle any thing which I do not sincerely conceive to belong to the subject.”

By this stroke, our vindicator imagined he had reduced the President to a dilemma from which he would be unable to extricate him. He thought that the President’s circumspect disposition would lead him to refuse the communication of the paper demanded; and in that case he would have impressed on the public mind an idea of its containing something at once capable of acquitting himself, and of criminating the President. And should the paper be granted, he hoped that he should be able to make such comments on it as would at least render the chief of the executive as odious as himself.

The President did not balance a moment on the course he should take.

“It is not difficult,” says he in the answer, “to perceive what your objects are; but that you may have no cause to complain of the withholding any paper (however private and confidential) which you shall think necessary in a case of so serious a nature, I have directed that you should have the inspection of my letter of the 22nd of July, agreeably to your request; and you are at full liberty to publish, without reserve, any and every private and confidential letter I ever wrote you; nay, more, every word I ever uttered to or in your presence, from whence you can derive any advantage in your justification.”

I am sorry that the bounds within which I propose to confine myself do not permit me to give the reader the whole of this noble letter; here, however, is sufficient to prove the generous deportment of the writer. These extracts most eminently depict the minds of the parties: in one we hear the bold, the undaunted language of conscious integrity, and in the other the faltering accents of guilt.

Baffled in this project of recrimination, the vindicator had recourse to others, if possible, still more unmanly. A paragraph appeared in the public papers, as extracted from a Carolina gazette, telling us a shocking tale about Mr. Randolph having been ill-treated by the President, who had been worked up by a wicked British faction to accuse him of having his price, and that in consequence poor Mr. Randolph had been sacrificed, merely because he had advised the President not to sign the treaty with Great Britain.

After an infinity of other subterfuges and precautions, the Vindication itself comes forth; not in the face of the day, like the honest, innocent man from his peaceful dwelling, but like the thief from his hiding-place, preceded by his skulking precursors. These numerous tricks and artifices have, however, all failed: the public has had the candour to prejudge nothing: the thunder has been reserved for the day of judgment.

Should the vindicator be able to find some quibble to excuse these preliminary manœuvres, how will he justify the sale of his pretended Vindication? If it be not necessary to the justification of his conduct while in the service of the public, why is it published? and if it be, how dares he attempt to make them pay for it? He every where boasts of his pure republicanism, and fawningly courts the favour of the people by calling on them to judge between him and his patron, the President. He pretends to have held his office from them, though every one knows that he held it from the President, at whose pleasure he was removeable, and to whom alone he was in this case accountable. But allow him to hold his office from the people, it is to them he owes an account of his behaviour therein, and that gratis too.

Having dismissed these circumstances, which, though but trifles, if compared with many others that we shall meet with, were too glaring to pass unnoticed, I now come to the Vindication itself.

Mr. Randolph begins by a “statement of facts,” and in this I shall imitate him; but as to the manner of doing this we shall differ widely. He has endeavoured to lose us in a maze of letters and answers, and extracts and conversations, and notes and memorials and certificates; but as it is not my intention to render what I have to say unintelligible, not to weary my readers’ patience with a roundabout story, I shall endeavour to be as concise as possible consistent with perspicuity.

On the 31st of October, 1794, citizen Fauchet, the then French minister at Philadelphia, dispatched a letter to the committee of the government in France, informing them, among other things, of the rise and progress of the insurrection in the Western counties of Pennsylvania. This letter was put on board the Jean Bart, a French corvette, which sailed directly afterwards for France, and on her passage took an English merchant vessel. When the corvette arrived in the British channel, she was brought to by a frigate of the enemy. As soon as the commander of the former saw that it was impossible to escape, he brought the dispatches, and citizen Fauchet’s letter among the rest, upon the deck, and threw them overboard. But unfortunately for Mr. Randolph and some other patriots that we shall see mentioned by-and-by, there was a man on board who had the presence of mind and the courage to jump into the sea and save them. The reader will not be astonished at this heroic act, at this proof of unfeigned and unbought patriotism, when I tell him that the man was no sans-culotte citizen, but a British tar. It was indeed no other than the captain of the English vessel that the corvette had taken on her passage. This good fellow and the dispatches he had so gallantly preserved were taken up by the frigate’s boat; the dispatches were, of course, sent to the British government, by whom citizen Fauchet’s letter was, through Mr. Hammond, communicated to the President of the United States. The President showed it to Mr. Randolph, desiring him to make such explanations as he chose; and Mr. Randolph tells us that it was in consequence of what passed at this interview that he give in the resignation, of which he has since published a vindication.

Although this extraordinary performance is called “A Vindication of Mr. Randolph’s Resignation,” people naturally look upon it as an attempt to vindicate his conduct previous to that resignation. The people had heard about corruption, about thousands of dollars, and about the pretended patriots of America having their prices; these were the points the people wanted to see cleared up. They could not conceive that exposing to the whole world, and consequently to the enemies of this country, their President’s private letters of July 1795, relative to the treaty, could possibly tend to invalidate the charges of treason contained in the French minister’s letter, written in the month of October, 1794. But Mr. Randolph, it appears, saw the matter in another light. He has thought proper to attempt to balance the crime laid to his charge against another supposed crime which he imputes to the President, concerning the ratification of the treaty.

Hence it follows that the Vindicator labours at two principal objects: to wash away the stain on his own reputation, and to represent the President of the United States as ratifying the treaty under the influence of a British faction. That the latter of these can, as I have already observed, have no sort of relation to the great and important point towards which the public mind has been so long directed, it is very manifest; nevertheless since it has been forced upon us, it would look like flinching from the inquiry to pass it over in silence. I shall therefore, after having observed on that part of the Vindication which comprehends what ought to have been its only object, endeavour to place in as fair a light as possible the indirect charge that is brought against the President.

From citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter it appears that Mr. Randolph did betray to him the secrets of the American government, and make him overtures for money, to be applied to some purpose relative to the insurrection in the Western counties of Pennsylvania.

The first of these is fully set forth in the very first paragraph of the letter, which runs thus:—

“The measures which prudence prescribes to me to take with respect to my colleagues, have still presided in the digesting of the dispatches signed by them, which treat of the insurrection of the western counties, and of the repressive means adopted by the Government. I have allowed them to be confined to the giving of a faithful, but naked recital of events; the reflections therein contained scarcely exceed the conclusions easily deducible from the character assumed by the public prints. I have reserved myself to give you, as far as I am able, a key to the facts detailed in our reports. When it comes in question to explain, either by conjectures or by certain data, the secret views of a foreign government, it would be imprudent to run the risk of indiscretions, and to give oneself up to men, whose known partiality for that government, and similitude of passions and interests with its chiefs, might lead to confidences, the issue of which is incalculable. Besides, the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph alone throw a satisfactory light on every thing that comes to pass. These I have not yet communicated to my colleagues. The motives already mentioned lead to this reserve, and still less permit me to open myself to them at the present moment. I shall then endeavour, citizen, to give you a clue to all the measures of which the common dispatches give you an account, and to discover the true causes of the explosion, ^{Ref 047} which it is obstinately resolved to repress with great means, although the state of things has no longer any thing alarming.”

Notwithstanding the unequivocal expressions contained in this paragraph, the vindicator has endeavoured at a satisfactory explanation of it, and so confident does he pretend to be of having succeeded, that he says:—

“I hesitate not to pronounce, that he who feels a due abhorrence of party manœuvres will form a conclusion honourable to myself.”

Let us see, then, how he has extricated himself; what proof or what argument he has produced to wipe away the stigma, and to warrant the confidence with which he expresses himself of the people’s forming a conclusion to his honour.

The phrase of the first paragraph of citizen Fauchet’s letter which more immediately attracts our attention, is the “precious confessions of Mr. Randolph.” These words the vindicator has taken a deal of pains to explain away, and with his usual success. He begins by saying, that

“This observation upon the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph involves the judicious management of the office. It implies no deliberate impropriety, and cannot be particularly answered, until particular instances are cited.”

I see nothing here from which we are to form a conclusion to his honour; nor did he, it seems, for he immediately throws the task on citizen Fauchet’s certificate. This extra diplomatic instrument was obtained by the famous journey to Rhode-Island, under what circumstances we shall see by-and-by; at present let us hear what citizen Fauchet says in it:—

“As to the communications which he (Mr. Randolph) has made to me at different times, they were only of opinions, the greater part, if not the whole of which, I have heard circulated as opinions. I will observe here, that none of his conversations with me concluded without his giving me the idea that the President was a man of integrity, and a sincere friend to France. This explains in part (well put in) what I meant by the terms, his precious confessions. When I speak in the same paragraph in these words: ‘Besides the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph alone cast upon all which happens a satisfactory light,’ I have still in view only the explanations of which I have spoken above; and I must confess, that very often I have taken for confessions, what he might have communicated to me by virtue of a secret authority. And many things which I had, at the first instant, considered as confessions, were the subject of public conversation.”

Without admitting, even for a single moment, the validity of the evidence of this certificate, we may be permitted to admire its effrontery. Precious confessions are here explained to signify opinions, and opinions, too, that were the subject of public conversation! Oh! monstrous! Oh! front of tenfold brass! Were we to give credit to what citizen Fauchet has endeavoured to palm upon us in this certificate, we must conclude him to be either drunk or mad at the time of writing the paragraph which he thus explains, and the rest of his letter by no means authorizes such a conclusion. What idea do the words precious confessions convey to our minds? What is a confession? An acknowledgment which some one is prevailed on to make. And in what sense do we ever apply the epithet precious, but in that of valuable, rare, costly or dear? Would any man, that knows the meaning of these words, apply them to designate the common chat of a town, mere newspaper topics? We say, for instance, precious stones; but do we mean by these the rocks that we see cover the lands, or the flints and pebbles that we kick along the road? If some impudent quack were to tell us, that the pavement of Philadelphia is composed of precious stones, should we not hurl them at his head; should we not lapidate him?

But, let us see in what sense citizen Fauchet employs the same word precious, in another place, even in the very certificate where he endeavours to explain it to mean nothing. After speaking of the secret machinations of Mr. Hammond, the conspirations of the English, and their being at the bottom of the Western insurrection, he comes to the means that Mr. Randolph had proposed to get at their secrets, and says,

“I was astonished that the Government itself did not procure for itself information so precious.”

Here, then, precious signifies secret. This information so precious, was rare information; information not to be come at without a bribe. This phrase fallen from the pen of citizen Fauchet, while his invention was upon the rack, to explain away another charge against the moral Mr. Randolph, fully proves in what sense he had ever used the word precious.

However, we should be very far from doing justice to these “precious confessions of Mr. Randolph,” by considering them in their naked, independent sense. It is very rarely that the true meaning of any phrase, or even of a complete sentence, is to be come at without taking in the context. That these precious confessions were neither so trifling nor of so public a nature as the citizen would make us believe, is clear from the tenor of the whole first paragraph above transcribed, which Mr. Randolph forgot to beg his friend to explain. After having mentioned the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, “these,” says he, “I have not yet communicated to my colleagues.” And why?—“Because,” adds he, “the motives, already mentioned, lead to this reserve, and still less permit me to open myself to them at the present moment.” How is this, then? Why was this cautious reserve necessary, even towards his colleagues of the legation, if there was nothing to communicate but mere “opinions,” that were “the subject of public conversation?” What an over-and-above close man this must have been! Would to God, Mr. Randolph had been as close! But what were these “motives already mentioned?” We must consult the paragraph again here. The citizen, after stating that he allowed the dispatches, signed by his colleagues, to be confined to a naked recital of events, scarcely exceeding what might be gathered from the newspapers, observes, that he has reserved to himself the task of giving a key to these joint reports, and adds: when it comes in

“question to explain the secret views of a foreign government, it would be imprudent to give oneself up to men, whose known partiality for that government, and similitude of passions and interests with its chiefs, might lead to confidences, the issue of which is incalculable.”

Here we have the motives that prevented citizen Fauchet from communicating the precious confessions to his colleagues. Ordinary information, hardly exceeding what was to be learnt from the gazettes, he suffered them to participate; but as to the secret views of the Government, and the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, he kept them in his own breast; because his colleagues were men

“who had a known partiality for the Government, and a similitude of passions and interests with its chiefs!”

This reason for not trusting the colleagues of citizen Fauchet, is corroborated by a sentence of Mr. Randolph himself, who certainly forgot what he was about when he wrote it.

“Two persons,” says he, “were in commission with Mr. Fauchet, and it was suspected, from a quarter in which I confided, that these persons were in a political intimacy with members of our Government, not friendly to me.”

I am sure the reader will agree with me, that this was a reason, and a substantial one too, for not communicating to them the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph, if those confessions went to expose the secret views of the Government; but, if, on the contrary, they went no further than “opinions,” that were “the subject of public conversation,” the precaution was perfectly ridiculous. It was like the secret of the idiot, who, whispering a by-stander, told him the sun shined, but begged him to let it go no further.

In short all the parts of this account correspond so exactly, that they only want to amount to a proof of innocence instead of guilt, to render them a subject of pleasing contemplation. Citizen Fauchet receives certain precious confessions from Mr. Randolph, which he keeps from his colleagues, because they have a partiality for the Government, and because, from their intimacy with some of the members of it, they might make dangerous discoveries. The inevitable conclusion then is, that these precious confessions were not of opinions, that were the subject of public conversation, and that they were of a nature hostile to the Government; and whether this be “a conclusion honourable” to Mr. Randolph, or not, I leave the reader to determine.

Citizen Fauchet, in that part of his certificate which I have above quoted, makes an indirect attempt to establish a belief, that Mr. Randolph, in his confessions, never uttered any thing to the prejudice of the character of the President of the United States. This is his aim, when he says that,

“None of his conversations concluded without giving the idea that the President was a man of integrity.”

But, we are to observe, that the certificate was originally intended for the persual of the President. Who could tell how far such a declaration, if it should be believed, might go towards making Mr. Randolph’s peace? It has never yet appeared, that he was in earnest about a public vindication, till after his return from Rhode-Island; that is, till he saw that it was absolutely impossible to smother the affair. To have brought this declaration into the certificate with any other view than that of softening the President, would have been pure folly. The President being a man of incorruptible integrity, was surely no precious confession; on the contrary, I am mistaken if it was not among the most disagreeable information that citizen Fauchet ever received from his friend, the Secretary. If this certificate had, then, been intended for the public, to what purpose was the declaration concerning the President thrusted into it? Did the framer, or rather framers of it, imagine; nay, could they possibly imagine, that Mr. Randolph would acquire favour with the people for having declared that the man he now attempts to blacken, the man he now represents as under the guidance of a British faction, is a man of incorruptible integrity? The President’s character stood in no need of the eulogy of Mr. Randolph, or the certificate of a mushroom French minister.

The desperate Vindicator makes one struggle more. He endeavours to back the evidence of citizen Fauchet’s certificate with a protestation of his own, in which he denies ever having received a farthing for the communication of state-secrets; says that he never communicated any such secrets; that he never uttered a syllable which violated the duties of office; all which, adds he,

“I assert, and to the assertion I am ready to superadd the most solemn sanction.”

I shall not throw away my time in attempting to invalidate this kind of testimony. There was a time when the solemn sanction, or even bare assertion, of Mr. Randolph, might have been formidable; but that time is, alas! no more.

We now come to the overtures for money, to be applied to some purpose relative to the insurrection in the Western counties of Pennsylvania.

Citizen Fauchet, in the 15th paragraph of the fatal letter, had been speaking of the assembling of the insurgents at Braddock’s Field, and of the preparations of the Federal government to reduce them to order and obedience. Then, in the 16th paragraph, he comes to speak of the conduct of certain persons in power at this momentous crisis.

“In the meantime,” says he, “although there was a certainty of having an army, yet it was necessary to assure themselves of co-operators among the men whose patriotic reputation might influence their party, and whose lukewarmness or want of energy in the existing conjunctures might compromise the success of the plans. Of all the governors whose duty it was to appear at the head of the requisitions, the Governor of Pennsylvania ^{Ref 048} alone enjoyed the name of Republican; his opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, ^{Ref 049} and of his systems, was known to be unfavourable. The Secretary of this State ^{Ref 050} possessed great influence in the popular society of Philadelphia, which in its turn influenced those of other States; of course he merited attention. It appears, therefore, that these men, with others unknown to me, all having, without doubt, Randolph at their head, were balancing to decide on their party. Two or three days before the proclamation was published, ^{Ref 051} and of course before the cabinet had resolved on its measures, Mr. Randolph came to me with an air of great eagerness, and made me the overtures of which I have given you an account in No. 6. Thus, with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have decided on civil war or on peace! Thus, the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their prices! It is very true, that the certainty of these conclusions, painful to be drawn, will for ever exist in our archives! What will be the old age of this government, if it is thus early decrepid!”

From this paragraph we learn that certain men of weight and influence were balancing as to the side they should take, at the time of the insurrection; that two or three days before the issuing of the proclamation for the assembling of a military force to march against the insurgents, Mr. Randolph went to citizen Fauchet, and made to him certain overtures; and that from the nature of these overtures, citizen Fauchet concluded that if he had had some thousands of dollars at his disposal, he could have decided on civil war or on peace. From this latter circumstance it is evident that the overtures were for money, to be applied to some purpose relative to the insurrection; and, therefore, our inquiries (if, indeed, inquiries are at all necessary) are naturally confined to two questions: who was to receive this money? and for what purpose?

The shortest way of determining the first of these questions is, to resort to the fair and unequivocal meaning of the paragraph itself. Suppose the following passage of it alone had come to light:—

“These men, with others unknown to me, all having, without doubt, Randolph at their head, were balancing to decide on their party. Two or three days before the proclamation was published, Mr. Randolph came to me with an air of great eagerness, and made to me the overtures, of which I have given you an account in No. 6. Thus, with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have determined on civil war, or on peace.”

Suppose, I say, that of all the letter, this passage alone had been found, what should we have wanted to know further?—Why, certainly, who these men were. This is what we should have cursed our stars for having kept from us. Randolph, we should have said, is at the head of them; but who are these men? To whom do these important words refer?—Luckily, citizen Fauchet’s letter leaves us nothing to wish for on this head; these words are relative to “the Governor of Pennsylvania,” the “Secretary of this State,” ^{Ref 052} and other persons unknown to the writer. These men, according to citizen Fauchet’s letter, were, with Randolph at their head, balancing to decide on their party; and while they were thus balancing, Mr. Randolph, being the leader, went to citizen Fauchet and made him such overtures as would have enabled him, had he had “some thousands of dollars,” to decide on civil war or on peace.

I shall not amuse myself with drawing conclusions here, as I am fully persuaded that no one who shall do me the honour of reading these sheets will find any difficulty in doing it for himself. It is, however, necessary to notice what has been advanced with an intention of doing away the impression that this part of citizen Fauchet’s letter must inevitably leave on our minds, with respect to the persons in whose behalf the money overtures were made.

The reader has observed that citizen Fauchet mentions a dispatch, which he calls his No. 6, and to which he refers his government for the particulars of Mr. Randolph’s overtures. An extract from this No. 6 the Vindicator has obtained from citizen Adet, the present French minister, which he has published in his Vindication, and which I here insert:—

“Scarce was the commotion known, when the Secretary of State came to my house. All his countenance was grief. He requested of me a private conversation. It is all over, he said to me. A civil war is about to ravage our unhappy country. Four men, by their talents, their influence, and their energy, may save it. But, debtors of English merchants, they will be deprived of their liberty if they take the smallest step. Could you lend them instantaneously funds sufficient to shelter them from English persecution? This inquiry astonished me much. It was impossible for me to make a satisfactory answer. You know my want of power, and my defect of pecuniary means. I shall draw myself off from the affair by some common-place remarks, and by throwing myself on the pure and unalterable principles of the Republic.”

God of Heaven! what must be the situation of a man who publishes such a piece as this, in order to weaken the evidence against him!

We should certainly be at full liberty to reject the testimony contained in this extract; not on account of the person who signs it (though his not being a Christian might with some weak-minded people be a weighty objection), but on account of its being but a part of the No. 6 referred to. I do not, however, wish to derive any advantage from this circumstance: I admit the validity of the testimony contained in the extract, and well I may, for the greatest enemy of Mr. Randolph and of those who are involved with him, could wish for no better confirmation of the 16th paragraph of citizen Fauchet’s letter.

The only circumstance in which the extract from No. 6 appears to differ from the letter is, that in the extract mention is made of four men, and in the letter of only three. But let it be observed, that though only three persons are named in the letter, yet citizen Fauchet adds to them, “others unknown to me.”

The next piece of exculpatory evidence produced is the certificate of citizen Fauchet. But before we quote this paper again, it is necessary to see how it was obtained.

When citizen Fauchet’s letter was first shown to Mr. Randolph in the council-chamber, and he was asked to explain it, he hesitated; desired time to commit his remarks to writing; went to his office, locked up his own apartment there, and gave the key to the messenger; then went home, from whence he wrote to the President, requesting a copy of the letter, and informing him that if citizen Fauchet had not quitted the continent he would go after him, to prepare himself for an inquiry. Was this the behaviour of a man grossly calumniated? Such a man would have said: I see, sir, by this letter that I am charged with crimes which my heart abhors; I declare the writer to be an infamous slanderer; but as appearances are against me, here are the keys of my office and even of my private papers: examine them all, and I will remain here till the examination is ended. Send also for citizen Fauchet, if he be yet in the country: bring him here, and let him avow this to my face, if he dares.—I appeal to the reader’s breast whether there is any thing that a man, strong in his integrity, would have so ardently desired as to be confronted with his accuser; or any thing he would have so obstinately refused as to be the messenger to seek him? Allowing, however, that a man falsely accused of such heinous crimes had, in a paroxysm of rage, quitted the council-chamber to pursue the assassin of his reputation, would he not have instantly departed? Would he have closed his eyes till he came up with him? Would any mortal means of conveyance have been swift enough for his pursuit? And, once arrived, would he not have rushed into his presence? Would not the sight of the perfidious miscreant have almost driven him to madness? Had he found him in the arms of his harlot, or grovelling at the altar of his pagan gods, would he not have dragged him forth to chastisement? The heart that swells with injured innocence is deaf to the voice of discretion!

How different from all this was the cool and gentle, and genteel deportment of the Vindicator! He stays very quietly two days at Philadelphia, before his departure for Rhode-Island, and loiters away no less than ten days in performing a journey that the common stages perform in five. When he arrives, he goes and has a téte-à-téte with citizen Fauchet, and so mild and so complaisant is he, and so little malice does he bear on account of the wound given to his honour, that he afterwards writes the citizen a note, in which he styles himself his humble servant.

I pass by the certificates of a tipstaff and a pilot, which were brought in as auxiliaries to that of citizen Fauchet, and come to the questions that were to be put, but which were not put, to citizen Fauchet, before Mr. Marchant, a judge of the district of Rhode-Island, and Mr. Malbone, a member of the House of Representatives. This play at question and answer must have been fine sport for Messrs. Marchant and Malbone, who would have had the dramatis personæ before their eyes; but when committed to paper, a perusal of it would have been quite flat and insipid to us. No question, I am positive, would on this occasion have drawn truth from the lips of citizen Fauchet; except, perhaps, the question formerly employed in the Inquisition: for as to oaths upon the Holy Evangelists, what power could they have had upon the conscience of a man whose creed declares the Bible to be a lie, and who alternately adores the goat, the hog, the dog, the cat, and the jack-ass? ^{Ref 053}

After these remarks on the manner in which this certificate, which we are called upon to give credit to, was procured, we may venture to quote it, without running the risk of being misled by its protestations. Let us then hoar what it says with respect to the persons in whose behalf the overtures for money were made:—

“About the month of July or August, in the last year, he (Mr. Randolph) came to see me (citizen Fauchet), at my house. We had a private conversation of about twenty minutes. His countenance bespoke distress. He said to me that he was afraid a civil war would soon ravage America. I inquired of him what new information was procured. He said that he began to believe that, in fact, the English were fomenting the insurrection, and that he did not doubt that Mr. Hammond ^{Ref 054} and his Congress would push some measures with respect to the insurrection, with an intention of giving embarrassment to the United States. He demanded of me if, as my Republic was itself interested in these manœuvres, I could not, by the means of some correspondents, procure some information of what was passing. I answered him, that I believed I could. He replied upon this, that having formed many connections, by the means of flour contracts, three or four persons, among the different contractors, might, by talents, energy, and some influence, procure the necessary information, and save America from a civil war, by proving that England interfered in the troubles of the West.”

After this the certificate says that Mr. Randolph stated a doubt as to the pecuniary affairs of these contractors, and observed that those whom citizen Fauchet

“might be able to employ, might perhaps be debtors of English merchants; and that, in that case, might perhaps be exposed to be harassed and arrested; and, therefore, he asked if the payment of the sums due them, by virtue of the existing contracts, would not be sufficiently early to render them independent of British persecution.”

So! here are all “these men who were balancing to decide on their party; these men, who, by their talents, influence, and energy, might save the country!” these men who could have decided on civil war or on peace are, by this barefaced certificate, turned into industrious, peaceable flour-merchants.

This explanation exceeds even the impudence of Lord Peter, who swore that the words gold lace meant a broom-stick.

Mr. Randolph pretends that, so far from having made overtures for himself and company, he rejects with horror the idea of giving a pair of gloves even to these honest flour-men. Citizen Fauchet, it is true, did understand Mr. Randolph as advising him to obtain intelligence, by assisting with loans those who had contracted with him for flour: but now calling to mind all the circumstances, he has an intimate conviction that he was mistaken in the propositions of Mr. Randolph, who only asked if these good people could not be accommodated with the “sums due them on their contracts!” Hence, then, they wish to infer that all was fair and honest; that no such thing as corruption was ever dreamt of. Admit them this, for a moment, and then let them account for the following expressions, which come immediately after the money overtures, mentioned in the dispatch, No. 6:—

“This inquiry astonished me much. It was impossible for me to make a satisfactory answer. You know my want of power, and my defect of pecuniary means. I shall draw myself off from the affair by some common-place remarks, and by throwing myself on the pure and unalterable principles of the Republic.”

Now, why pure? Why throw himself on the pure principles of his Republic? How could the pure principles of his Republic forbid him to yield to a proposal that had nothing impure in it? And why does he talk of his want of power, and of pecuniary means? Would it not be the height of stupidity for a man to talk this way, if he was required to do nothing but to pay three or four flour-men “the sums due them on their contracts?”

Nor was such a trifling proposal better calculated to awaken in citizen Fauchet these reflections!

“Thus, with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have decided on civil war, or on peace! Thus, the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their prices! It is very true that the certainty of these conclusions, painful to be drawn, will for ever exist in our archives! What will be the old age of this government, if it is thus early decrepid!”

Would any man, except a madman or a fool, have made these reflections on a proposal to pay certain merchants “sums due them,” and particularly when those sums were to enable them to serve their country, by exploring the secret machinations of an hostile power? Mr. Randolph’s proposing to come at the secrets of the English minister, by prevailing on citizen Fauchet to pay the sums due to his contractors, would certainly have excited a laugh in Fauchet: and if he had thought such a silly proposition worth a mention in his dispatches, he would naturally have said—“What a loggerheaded fellow they have chosen for Secretary of State here! Would you imagine that he has proposed to me to pay my flour-contractors what I owe them, as a mean of inducing them to penetrate into the designs of the English government! The man must certainly be out of his wits, or he never would be foolish enough to suppose that these people, in gratitude for having received no more than their due from me, would be induced to undertake a dangerous and expensive service for him. However, the poor man, though a little crack-brained, is a good patriot, and has no other motive in all this than to serve his country.” These would have been the remarks of citizen Fauchet had the overtures been of the nature he now pretends they were. He would have had all the reason in the world to accuse the Secretary of folly, but none to accuse him of guilt; none to authorize those bitter reflections on the saleableness of the consciences of the pretended patriots of America, or on the decrepitude of the Government.

This is not all. If the overtures for money were in behalf of citizen Fauchet’s flour-men, there remains a very important passage of his intercepted letter which both he and the Vindicator have left unexplained. It is this:—

“As soon as it was decided that the French Republic purchased no men to do their duty, there were to be seen individuals about whose conduct the Government could at least form uneasy conjectures, giving themselves up with a scandalous ostentation to its views, and even seconding its declarations. ^{Ref 055} The popular societies soon emitted resolutions stamped with the same spirit; and who, although they may have been advised by love of order, might nevertheless have omitted or uttered them with less solemnity. Then were seen coming from the very men whom we had been accustomed to regard as having little friendship for the system of the Treasurer, harangues without end, in order to give a new direction to the public mind. The militia, however, manifest some repugnance, particularly in Pennsylvania; at last, by excursions or harangues, incomplete requisitions are obtained. How much more interesting than the changeable men I have painted above were those plain citizens!” &c.

That citizen Fauchet understood the money overtures to be made on the part of these changeable men is evident; for the passage here transcribed follows immediately after the paragraph in which those overtures are mentioned. And the passage itself is too unequivocal to be misunderstood. All this scandalous ostentation, he says, these second-hand declarations, and harangues without end, in favour of the Government, took place among these changeable men as soon as it was known (and not before) that the French Republic purchased no men to do their duty. Now then, let Mr. Randolph, or any one of these changeable men, twist this passage till it applies to his flour-merchants, if he can. What! did the flour-merchants give themselves up to the views of the Government with a scandalous ostentation? What harangues did these poor devils ever make, I wonder, to disguise their past views, and give a new direction to the public mind? We all know that the democratic Societies and the good Governor of Pennsylvania issued declarations seconding that of the Government; but the flour-merchants never issued any, or at least that I know of. And yet the citizen tells us, that all these harangues and declarations took place as soon as it was decided that the French Republic purchased no men to do their duty. How then, in the name of all that is vile and corrupt, could the money overtures be made in behalf of three or four flour-merchants?

But I must not let these haranguers go off so.

“Then,” says citizen Fauchet, “were seen coming from the very men whom we had been accustomed to regard as having little friendship for the system of the Treasurer, harangues without end.”

Who, then, were the persons that citizen Fauchet had been accustomed to regard as having little friendship for the system of the Treasurer?

“Of all the governors,” says Citizen Fauchet, in the 16th paragraph, already quoted, “of all the governors whose duty it was to appear at the head of the requisitions, the Governor of Pennsylvania alone enjoyed the name of Republican: his opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury, and of his systems, was known to be unfavourable.” In another part of the letter, when speaking about the behaviour of several of the general officers on the Western expedition, he says, “The Governor of Pennsylvania, of whom it never would have been suspected, lived intimately and publicly with Hamilton.”

As to the fact concerning the harangues without end, those of my readers whose memories are not very faithful, have only to open the Philadelphia newspapers for the months of August and September, 1794. Let the reader, particularly if he be a Pennsylvanian, treasure up all these things in his mind.

I have but one more observation to add here, and that does not arise from any thing said in the Vindication, but from a paragraph which appeared in Mr. Bache’s Gazette of the 22nd December, signed A. J. Dallas, and which contained the following words:—

“The publication of Mr. Fauchet’s intercepted letter, renders any remark unnecessary on my part, or on the part of the Governor, upon the villanous insinuations of the libeller” [meaning Mr. Wilcocks, who had said that it was reported that citizen Fauchet’s letter charged the Governor of Pennsylvania, Mr. Randolph, and Valerius (by which name Mr. Dallas looks upon himself as designated) of bribery and corruption], “in relation to the contents of that letter; but we may expect to derive a perfect triumph on the occasion, from the candour of those who have incautiously circulated injurious conjectures, and from the mortification of those who have wilfully fabricated iniquitous falsehoods.”

It seems that this A. J. Dallas is the self-same “Secretary of this State,” and that this governor is the same “governor of Pennsylvania,” of whom citizen Fauchet has made such honourable mention, and of whom we have been talking all this time. For my part, I do not know the men, nor either of them, nor have I any ambition to know them, but if they can see any thing in citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter from which they “expect to derive a perfect triumph,” I congratulate them on their penetration with all my heart. Should they triumph, their triumph will be perfect, indeed; for conscious I am, that it will be attended with this singular and happy circumstance, that it will excite envy in no living soul? ^{Ref 056}

As I am pretty confident that no further remark is necessary with respect to the persons who were to receive the product of Mr. Randolph’s overtures, I shall now speak to the second question: for what purpose were they to receive it?

I believe few people have read the intercepted letter without being fully convinced that the money, if obtained, was to be so employed as to enable the receivers openly to espouse the cause of the Western insurgents, and overturn the Federal government, or, at least, counteract its measures so far as to oblige those at the head of it to abandon it to the direction of those corrupt and profligate men who wished to prevent any accommodations taking place with Great Britain, and to plunge their devoted country into a war on the side of France. The passage of the letter where the overtures are mentioned authorizes this conclusion; and when we come to examine the other paragraphs, together with the extract from the dispatch No. 6, and to compare the whole of citizen Fauchet’s account with the well-known conduct of those who are clearly designated as the persons in whose behalf the money overtures were made, the evidence becomes irresistible.

To weaken this evidence, nothing has been advanced, that does not, if possible, add to its force, by showing to what more than miserable shifts and subterfuges the Vindicator has been driven. Nevertheless as we profess to make observations on the Vindication, all that it contains, however false and absurd, claims some share of our attention; and, therefore, we must now take a view of what has been said concerning the application of the money to be obtained by the overtures of Mr. Randolph, beginning, as before, with the certificate of citizen Fauchet.

After telling us, that he had frequently had conversations with Mr. Randolph about the insurrection, and that he himself suspected the English of fomenting and supporting it, he says:—

“I communicated my suspicions to Mr. Randolph. I had already communicated to him a Congress, which at this time was holden at New-York. I had communicated to him my fears, that this Congress would have for its object, some manœuvre against the Republic of France, and to render unpopular some virtuous men, who were at the head of affairs; to destroy the confidence which existed on one hand, between General Clinton (late governor of New-York) and his fellow-citizens, and on the other, that which united Mr. Randolph to the President.”

He then tells us the old story about the flour-merchants.

Now comes Mr. Randolph’s turn:—

“Our discourse,” says he, “turned upon the insurrection and upon the expected machinations of Mr. Hammond and others at New-York, against the French Republic, Governor Clinton, and myself.—Fresh as the intelligence was upon my mind, that the British were fomenting the insurrection, I was strongly inclined to believe that Mr. Hammond’s Congress would not forego the opportunity of furnishing, to the utmost of their abilities, employment to the United States, and of detaching their attention and power from the European war. I own, therefore, that I was extremely desirous of learning what was passing at New-York. I certainly thought that those men, who were on an intimate footing with Mr. Fauchet, and had some access to British connections, were the best fitted for obtaining this intelligence.”

And for this reason he recommended the flour-men. Oh, master Randolph! master Randolph, Oh!

Here, then, this worthy statesman was endeavouring to render a most important service to his country, His only object being to dive into the machinations that the English Minister and his Congress were hatching against the United States! A very laudable pursuit. This story has something in it so flattering to human nature, that it is a pity it should be the most abominable falsehood that ever issued from the procreant brain of a pettyfogging politician.

In the first place, nobody sincerely believed, that the English had even the slightest correspondence or connection with the insurgents; nor did any body ever, from first to last, pretend to avow such a belief, that I know of, except Mr. Randolph and a certain Governor. These two gentlemen endeavoured to impress the idea of such a connection as well on the mind of the President as on that of the public; but neither of these yielded to the insidious suggestion. Both very naturally demanded proofs, and proofs were not to be found; unless the insurgents’ howling out liberty and equality, their planting liberty trees, and their wearing cockades à la tricolore, were proofs of their attachment to the English. No one circumstance that has yet come to light is a stronger proof of a deep-laid plot against the Federal government than the efforts of these men to give a false direction to the public mind. While they were making overtures to the French Minister, while they were endeavouring to feed the insurrection from that source, they threw out, in order to disguise their views, insinuations that another nation was at the bottom of it.

And what was this pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond at New-York, that it should so alarm our Vindicator, and make his friend Fauchet fear, that something would be attempted by it to the prejudice of Mr. Randolph and the “virtuous” father-in-law ^{Ref 057} of citizen Genet? Who composed this Congress? Why, Mr. Hammond was the President, and his wife, a sick child, and a nurse, were the members! A pretty Congress this to form machinations against the Government of the country, and to stir up a rebellion in a quarter four or five hundred miles distant! This Congress, too, was assembled at New-York, or rather on Long-Island, where I do not believe that citizen Fauchet had three or four, nor even one, flour-contractors; and, if so, how came the wise Mr. Randolph to imagine that the contractors would have made a journey from Virginia, where the greatest part of them were, or even from this city, to New-York, in order to dive into Mrs. Hammond’s and her maid’s secrets? The fellows must necessarily have remained some time there to effect the object of their mission; they must have gone skulking about incognito like other spies, and must of course have run the risk of kickings and rib-roastings in abundance; and all this for what? why truly, for nothing! for it would have been nothing, if they were to receive no more than what was “due them on their contracts,” and both our certificate-makers declare that they were not to have another farthing.

If the overtures had been for money to be employed in the procuring of intelligence of what the English Minister was about, is it not natural to suppose, that citizen Fauchet would have mentioned this circumstance in his very confidential letter? Yet we see that he has not let fall a word about it, either in his letter or in his dispatch, No. 6. Again, what would his reflections on such overtures have been? He would probably have exclaimed: Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have dived into all the machinations of the English! Instead of: “Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have decided on civil war or on peace! Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their prices!”—And, let me repeat, what could induce him to talk, in his dispatch No. 6, of throwing himself on the pure principles of his Republic, if nothing was in contemplation but the unravelling of the treacherous designs of the English?

But I do not rest upon this negative evidence to disprove all that the certificate-makers have attempted to impose on us, on this subject. Citizen Fauchet has let fall a sentence in his intercepted letter that proves, that he did not look upon the money overtures as being made with an intention of coming at the secrets of the English; that he never thought the English at all concerned in fomenting the insurrection; that he was well persuaded that the insurgents never looked for support from them; and that he was fully convinced of the meanness and baseness of all those who attempted to propagate such an opinion. “But,” says he in the 15th paragraph of the letter, “but, in order to obtain something on the public opinion, it was necessary to magnify the danger, to disfigure the views of those people (insurgents), to attribute to them the design of uniting themselves with England.—This step succeeded, an army is raised, &c. &c.” Here, then, he unequivocally gives the lie to every word that he has said on the subject in his certificate, and to every word that Mr. Randolph has been awkward enough to repeat after him. If he was so well informed that all these malicious tales about the interference of the English were invented and propagated merely in order to obtain something on the public opinion by magnifying the danger and disfiguring the views of the insurgents, all which, it is clear, he learnt from the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph; if he was so thoroughly convinced of all this, at the time of writing his letter, in October 1794, how comes he to recollect, in the month of August 1795, that both he and Mr. Randolph did “really suspect, that the English were fomenting the insurrection?” No; they never suspected any such thing; and they, and all others who pretended to suspect it, have only discovered to what pitiful tricks, what political quackery, they were reduced.

One closing observation on this subject. If money had been wanted to obtain intelligence concerning the pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond; if this object was so near Mr. Randolph’s heart as he hypocritically declares it was, whom ought he to have applied to? Whom would he naturally have applied to for the necessary sums? Whom but the President of the United States, under whose authority alone he could have acted in so delicate a conjuncture? He would have laid before him his suspicions of the dreadful Congress, and proposed to him the means the most likely of unveiling its machinations; and, if money had been necessary, it would, of course, have been granted. But, instead of this, away he runs to a foreign minister, and unbosoms himself to him, as if the secret was of too much importance to be deposited in the breast of the President, or as if the French had more interest in quelling the insurrection than the United States had. He appears to have looked upon citizen Joseph Fauchet as his father confessor; and for that reason it was, I suppose, he reserved for his ear, like a pious and faithful penitent, those precious secrets that he had kept hidden from all the world besides. In the council chamber at Philadelphia he was troubled with a locked jaw; but the instant he entered the confessional on the banks of the Schuylkill, to which the citizen seems to have retired on purpose, the complaint was removed, and he said more in “twenty minutes” than he will be able to unsay in twenty years.

To the side of a stream, in a deep lonely dell,

Father Joseph retir’d, as a hermit to dwell,

His hermitage, crown’d with a cap tricolour,

Brought a beggarly pilgrim his aid to implore.

First the holy man promis’d, and, for his professions,

The penitent made him most precious confessions.

Now tell me, dear son, said the hermit, your needs:—

Give me, good Father Joseph, a string of gold beads.—

A string of gold beads, says the hermit, Parbleu!

Your request, my dear son, appears dev’lish new,

He told him, in short, he was damnably poor,

Kick’d him out of his den, and slam’d to the door.

It is a great pity we are obliged to quit this delightful theme to return to the dry mercenary overtures of Mr. Randolph.

As it appears that he cannot persuade us that the money was to be employed for the purpose of coming at the machinations of the English, let us now see to what purpose it is much more likely it was to have been applied.

From the intercepted letter we learn, that the complying with the overtures would have enabled the French Republic to decide, for this country, on civil war or on peace; and we are told, in the extract No. 6, which has been intruded on us purposely to give a favourable turn to this passage of the latter, that the money, if obtained, would have put it in the power of four men to save the country. Mr. Randolph, in handling these two passages, has gone rather beyond his usual degree of assurance. He has taken a phrase from one and a phrase from the other, and tacked them together to suit himself. This done, he boldly asks, “what were to be the functions of these men.” And then comes out his triumphant answer—“To save the country from a civil war.” This is Lord Peter again with his totidem verbis. By running over the two papers, or either of them, this way, culling a phrase here and a phrase there, he may make them say anything he pleases; and he may do the same thing with any other writing. In this manner he may make even the New Year’s Gift say that he is an upright, worthy, incorruptible man; and God knows how far that is from the sentiments of the author. Is this phrase, which he compounded of ingredients taken from two different places, to be found in any part of citizen Fauchet’s dispatches? Has this tattling father confessor any where said, that the overtures were for money to save the country from a civil war? Has he said anything that will countenance such an inference? No; his dispatches, in every rational construction they will bear, clearly lead to a contrary conclusion.

He could have decided on civil war or on peace. If we are to understand by civil war, a successful opposition to the Federal government, the whole of his letter, from one end to the other, proves that nothing was so near his heart. He everywhere exclaims against the ambitious views of the Government, and defends the cause of the insurgents. He speaks of them as an oppressed people, and of the laws which they were armed to oppose, as harsh and unnecessary. The anarchical assembly in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, those outrageous villains who insulted the officers of justice, plundered the mail, drove peaceable and orderly people from their dwellings, dragged others forth to endure every other cruelty short of death, and who, in a word, were daily committing robbery and murder; this assembly of ruffians he calls, “the very pacific union of the counties in Braddock’s Field! a union which could not justify the raising of so great a force as fifteen thousand men.—Besides,” added he, “the principles uttered in the declaration of these people, rather announced ardent minds to be calmed, than anarchists to be subdued.”

When he comes to speak of those who wished to enforce the excise law, he gives way to the most bitter invectives, and almost curses the officers of Government, who counselled the marching of the troops. But, at last, he is compelled to give an account of the triumph of the Federal army; and here we plainly perceive, by the chagrin he expresses at that event, what he would have desired. He laments that the Government will acquire stability from it “for one complete session at least,” the discredit it will throw on “the insurgent principles of the patriots,” and concludes with this, to him, melancholy reflection:

“Who knows what will be the limits of this triumph? Perhaps advantage will be taken by it to obtain some laws for strengthening the Government, and still more precipitating the propensity, already visible, that it has towards aristocracy!”

Who, then, can be stupid enough to believe that if this man had had “some thousands of dollars to advance,” he would have advanced them to aid the Government, either directly or indirectly, against the insurgents, and to save the country from a civil war? And yet this we must believe, before we believe that Mr. Randolph, who was in all his secrets, would have made him overtures for that purpose.

As to the words in the dispatch No. 6, which are allowed to signify save the country, they must not be thus disjointed from what precedes them. The passage is this:

“Scarce was the commotion known when the Secretary of State came to my house. All his countenance was grief. He requested of me a private conversation. It is all over, said he to me. A civil war is about to ravage our unhappy country. Four men, by their talents, their influence, and their energy, may save it.”

Save it from what? Not from a civil war; it was, it seems, too late to do that; for it was all over. A civil war was to take place; that was a settled point, though the commotion was scarcely known; but four men, with the help of citizen Fauchet’s dollars, might save the country. That is, bring it out of that civil war refined and regenerated, and unclogged with the Federal government, or, at least, with those men who thwarted the views of citizen Fauchet and his nation.

Of all the expressions to be found in the Babylonish vocabulary of the French Revolution, there is not one the value of which is so precisely fixed as that before us—to save the country. When their first Assembly, the fathers of all the miseries of their country, violating the powers with which they were invested, reduced their king to an automation, laid their crooked fingers on the property of sixty or seventy thousand innocent persons, drove the faithful pastors from their flocks, and replaced them by a herd of vile apostates, they had the impudence to declare that they had saved their country! When their worthy successors hurled this degraded monarch from his throne; and, after a series of injustices, insults, and cruelties, as unmerited as unheard of, put an end to his sufferings on a scaffold, they, too, had saved their country! They have saved it, alas! again and again! Every signal act of their folly and tyranny, every one of their massacres, has ended with a declaration of their having saved their country. Even when they exchanged the Christian religion, the words of eternal life, for the impious and illiterate systems of a Paine and a Volney; when they declared the God of Heaven to be an impostor, and forbade his worship on pain of death; even then they pretended they had saved their country!——If Mr. Randolph meant to save his country in this way, he is welcome for me to the exclusive possession of the honour due to his zeal. He might surely venture to make overtures to citizen Fauchet for operating a salvation of this kind, without the least fear of a rebuff. But, stopping short of French salvation, he might wish to save it from the excise; from the Treasurer’s plans of finance; from a treaty with England; and, above all, from that “strengthening the Government, which had so visible a propensity to aristocracy.” Besides, when a man comes to ask for a bribe, he must have some excuse; for, base as he may be, and lost to shame, and well as he may be convinced that the person whom he addresses is as base as himself; yet there is something about the human form, though disfigured with a tricoloured cockade, which reminds the wretch that he has a soul.

As a convincing proof that the overtures mentioned by citizen Fauchet ought to be understood as made to obtain money for supporting, in some way or other, the insurrection in the West, and that the whole letter inevitably conveys this meaning, we need no other proof than that furnished by Mr. Randolph himself. It will certainly be supposed that he, above all others, would read this essay on bribery and corruption with an anxious and scrutinizing eye. We may fairly presume that he conned it over with more attention than ever school-boy did his lesson, or monk his breviary; and that, from the moment he was in his penitential weeds, he repeated the some-thousand-dollar sentence as often as a devotee Catholic repeats her Ave-Maria. Yet, notwithstanding all this; notwithstanding the interest he had in finding some other meaning for it; notwithstanding even his talent at warping, and twisting, and turning everything that falls in his way, we find him, on the 19th of August, writing to the President thus:

“For I here most solemnly deny, that any overture ever came from me which was to produce money to me [and not to flour-merchants], or any others for me; and that in any manner, directly or indirectly, was a shilling ever received by me; nor was it ever contemplated by me that one shilling should be applied by Mr. Fauchet to any purpose relative to the insurrection.”

He understood, then, the letter to mean, that money was to be received by him, and that it was to be applied to some purpose relative to the insurrection. This was the charge that he at first thought the letter contained against him. And when did he begin to think otherwise?—After he had been to see citizen Fauchet at Rhode-Island, and not a moment before. It was after this edifying tête-à-tête with his old father Joseph, that he began to recollect all about the flour-merchants and Mr. Hammond’s Congress; and so, with his memory thus refreshed, he comes back, and tells us in his Vindication:

“Mr. Fauchet’s letter, indeed, made me suppose that No. 6 possibly alluded to some actual or proffered loan or expenditure, for the nourishment of the insurrection; and, therefore, I thought it necessary to deny, in my letter of the 19th of August, that one shilling was contemplated by me to be applied by Mr. Fauchet relative to the insurrection.”

Citizen Fauchet’s memory, too, was, it seems, furbished up by this tête-à-tête; for he tells us, in his certificate, that

“now, calling to mind all the circumstances to which the questions of Mr. Randolph call my attention, I have an intimate conviction that I was mistaken in the propositions which I supposed to have been made to me.”

So here is a pretty story for you: Mr. Randolph forgets all about the flour-merchants, till he talks to citizen Fauchet; and citizen Fauchet forgets all about them, till he talks to Mr. Randolph! Their memories, like a flint and steel, could bring forth no light but by friction with each other. If this do not prove a close connection, I do not know what does. Even “their minds,” as the poet says, “in wedlock’s bands were joined.”

There is another singularity worth notice here. Citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter was written on the 31st of October 1794; and at that time (though it was just after the overtures were made), he did not recollect a word about the flour-men, nor about the machinations of the English: but, on the 27th of September 1795, that is to say, ten months and twenty-seven days afterwards, he has an intimate conviction of the whole matter; and tells as good a tough story about it, as one can in conscience expect from a being that kneels down at the shrine of a jackass. Mr. Randolph, also, recollected nothing about it on the 19th of August; but, in some thirty days after, it all came as pat into his head, as if it had but that moment happened.—Rhode-Island must be like the cave of the Dervise, where every one that entered saw, written in large characters, all the actions of his past life. If so, no wonder our adventurers made such haste to quit it.

I cannot dismiss this subject, without begging the reader once more to call to mind the sarcasms that citizen Fauchet pours out on the changeable men, who seconded the views of the Government with the most scandalous ostentation, who uttered resolutions and harangues without end, and who made excursions to collect troops, “as soon as it was decided that the French Republic purchased no men to do their duty.” Mr. Randolph lays hold of this word duty, too, as a drowning man would of a straw, and to just as much purpose; for if by this word citizen Fauchet meant the real duty of these haranguers, they were here in the performance of it. Their duty, their allegiance to the United States, required them to speak forcibly to the people, to second the declarations of the general Government, and, if ordered, to make excursions to collect troops; and yet he tells us, or rather he tells the French government, that they did all this, “as soon as it was decided that the French Republic purchased no men to do their duty.” Hence it is a clear case, that what he conceived to be their duty, and what he would have paid them to perform, if he had had money, was exactly the contrary of all this; and exactly the contrary of this would have been an opposition to the general Government, its probable defeat and consequent destruction.

After all, to fix the blackest guilt on the conspirators, it is not necessary to prove what their precise intentions were. It is sufficient that we have the clearest evidence, that in consideration of some thousands of dollars, they would have enabled a foreign nation to decide on civil war or on peace for this country. After having, then, satisfied ourselves with respect to who they are, this is the crime we have to lay to their charge. All their asseverations, all their windings and subterfuges are vain: they will never wash away the stain as long as words shall retain their meaning, and as long as virtue shall hold her seat in our hearts, and reason in our minds.

I have already trespassed on the reader’s patience much longer than I intended, and I fear longer than he will excuse; but, as I have promised to take some notice of the Vindicator’s attempt at recrimination, I must be as good as my word.

He has exerted his labyrinthian faculties to the utmost, in order to make it be believed, that the President of the United States ratified the Treaty with Great Britain, under the influence of what he modestly terms, a British Faction. With this object in view, he says, as addressing himself to the President—

“By my advice the United States would have been masters of all contingencies at the end of the campaign. To my unutterable astonishment, I soon discovered that you were receding from your determination. You had been reflecting upon your course from the 26th of June to the 16th of July: on the latter day you decided on it; a communication was made to the British Minister in conformity with it; letters were addressed to our own ministers in conformity to it; they were inspected by you before you rescinded your purpose: no imperious circumstances had arisen, except the strength of the popular voice, which would, according to ordinary calculation, corroborate, not reverse your former resolution; you assigned no new reasons for the new measures; and you disregarded the answer to Boston, although it had committed you upon a special fact, namely, a determination not to ratify during the existence of the provision-order. While I was searching for the cause of this singular revolution, and could not but remember that another opinion, which was always weighty with you, had advised you not to exchange ratifications until the provision-order should be abolished, or the American minister should receive further instructions, if it were not abolished; after duty had dictated to me an acquiescence in your varied sentiments, and I had prepared a memorial to Mr. Hammond adapted to them; after you had signed the ratification on the 18th of August; Mr. Fauchet’s letter brought forth a solution of the whole affair; thence it was that you were persuaded to lay aside all fear of a check from the friends of France; thence it was that myself and the French cause were instantaneously abandoned.”

This appears to be the sum of Mr. Randolph’s statement, the correctness of which is, at least, very doubtful; but, not to tire the reader with a discussion of little importance as to the main point, and in which I might possibly err, I shall take it for granted, that all that he has said and insinuated here is strictly true; and then his charge amounts to this: that the President, even after the decision of the Senate with respect to the treaty was known, hesitated, from the 26th of June to the 13th of July, as to what course he should pursue in regard to the ratification; that, on the day last mentioned, he came to a resolution not to ratify, until the order of his Britannic Majesty, for seizing provisions destined from this country to France, should be withdrawn; and that, notwithstanding this resolution, he did afterwards ratify, leaving the order in force, and that he was induced to this change of conduct from the discovery made by citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter.

Now, admitting all this to be so, it requires a greater degree of penetration than I am master of, to perceive how it proves the President to have ratified the treaty under the influence of a British faction, or any faction at all.

It would seem, that the Vindicator imagines, that, when a man has once taken a resolution, he can never change it, without incurring the censure of acting under some undue influence. How far such a maxim is from being founded in truth, the experience of every day will prove. A voluntary resolution must ever be supposed to be formed upon existing circumstances; and, of course, if any thing arises that totally alters those circumstances, it would be mere obstinacy to adhere to the resolution. If, for instance, a man determines on giving up a part of his income to a friend, and the next day finds that friend plotting against his life, must he, notwithstanding the discovery, put his determination in practice, or be subjected to the charge of acting under some undue influence? To maintain such a position appears to have been reserved for Mr. Randolph alone. The true question, therefore, is this: Was the discovery, made by citizen Fauchet’s intercepted letter, sufficient to justify the President’s altering his resolution, or not?

The only objection that it is pretended the President ever had to ratify the treaty, as advised by the Senate, was, the existence of the order of the King of Great Britain for seizing provisions destined from this country to France; because, he was given to understand, that ratifying while this order remained in force, might look like acknowledging the legality of the seizure, and might embroil the United States with the French Republic. That this was the suggestion of Mr. Randolph he now avows; and he even owns, nay, boasts, that he never would have given his advice in favour of the ratification at all, if he had not remembered, “that if the people were averse to the treaty, it was the constitutional right of the House of Representatives to refuse, upon original grounds, unfettered by the Senate and President, to pass the laws necessary for its execution.”

He has been tempted to make this avowal in order to ingratiate himself with the opposition; and the need they have of a man, able and willing to expose every secret of the Executive, may, perhaps, ensure him a momentary success; but the avowal furnishes, at the same time, an irresistible proof of his double dealing. We plainly perceive from this, as well as from all the documents he has brought forward on the subject, that he was the great, if not the only cause, of the delaying of the ratification. First, he starts objections; then proposes conferences between himself and the English Minister; then he drafts memorials; in short, he was taking his measures for undoing all that had been done, or, as Mr. Pickering well termed it, for “throwing the whole up in the wind.”

The situation of the President was, at this time, truly critical. On the one hand, he saw an instrument ready for his signature, which completed the long-desired object, an amicable termination of all differences with Great Britain; an object that twenty long years of war and disputation had not been able to accomplish: on the other hand, he was haunted with the feigned, but terrific forebodings of an artful Secretary of State, who lost no opportunity of representing the consummation of the act as a just cause of offence to France, the faithful ally of the United States, and the favourite of the people. At this embarrassing moment arrives the intercepted letter of citizen Fauchet. The charm, that held him in suspense, is at once dissolved. Here he sees that the hypocrite in whom he had confided, who first awakened doubts in his mind, who had been the cause of all the procrastination, and who had hitherto withheld his hand; here he sees him at the head of a faction opposed to his government, unveiling all its most secret views to a foreign minister, and even making overtures for money, which, if acceded to, would have enabled that minister to decide on civil war or on peace for this country. Was it not natural to imagine, that he should now see the advice of this “pretended patriot” as a lure to lead him into a snare, to render the treaty abortive, and eventually plunge the United States into a war with Great Britain? And was it not, then, I ask, as natural, that he should turn from it with indignation and horror? “Hence it was,” says the Vindicator, “that myself and the French cause were instantaneously abandoned.” And, upon my soul, I think it was high time.

In this letter the President saw also, what it was he had to expect from the friendship of the regenerated French. Here he finds a foreign minister writing a letter that breathes, from the first syllable of it to the last, the most treacherous hostility to the Federal government. He finds him caballing with some of the leading men in the state, reviling his administration; representing him as the head of an aristocracy; approving of an open rebellion; regretting its want of success, and that he had not the means of nourishing it. All this he sees addressed to the rulers of a nation professing the sincerest friendship for himself and the people of America. Was it possible that he should see any thing here to induce him to delay the ratification of an instrument, calculated to ensure peace and uninterrupted prosperity to his country, merely for the sake of obtaining an advantage for that nation? “Hence,” says the Ex-Secretary, in his plaintive style, “hence it was that he was persuaded to lay aside all fear of a check from the friends of France.” And well he might; for, what more had he to fear from them? Open war with such people is as much preferable to their intrigues, as a drawn sword is preferable to a poisoned repast.

The Vindicator, pursuing his plan for opening to himself a welcome from the adverse party, insidiously brings forward the remonstrances against the Treaty as a reason that ought to have prevented its ratification. Few people, who consider how these remonstrances were obtained, ever looked upon them as a reason of any weight: but, whatever attention they might merit before the discovery made by the intercepted letter, they merited none at all afterwards; for, there was, and there is, all the reason in the world to believe, that they originated from the same all-powerful cause as did the suggestions, difficulties, and delays of the Vindicator. He would fain persuade us, indeed, that no money-overtures ever passed between him and citizen Fauchet, after the little affair of the flour-merchants; but the method he takes of doing this is rather calculated to produce admiration at his effrontery, than conviction of his repentance. Addressing himself to the President he says—

“Do you believe, Sir, that if money was pursued by the Secretary of State, he would have been rebuffed by an answer, which implied no refusal; and would not have renewed the proposition: which, however, Mr. Fauchet confesses, he never heard of again?”

I do not know what the President might believe of the Secretary of State; but one would imagine that even such a rebuff as the Vindicator met with would have prevented any man from returning to the charge; however, I shall not contradict him here, as he must understand these things better than I, or, perhaps, any other man living.

After this, it is diverting to hear citizen Fauchet solemnly declare [in his certificate, mind that], “that the morals of his nation, and the candour of his government, severely forbid the use of money in any circumstances, which could not be publicly avowed.”

Consummate impudence! The morals of a nation that do not now so much as know the meaning of the word! The morals of a nation that, one day in the year, have hemp for their God! And the candour of his government, too! A pretty sort of candour, truly, to profess the tenderest affection for the President and Congress, while they were preparing to blow them all up. While they were endeavouring to foster a nest of conspirators, who would have sent them all to the guillotine, like the magistrates of Geneva, or swung them up in the embraces of their elastic god: From the morals and candour of such people, God defend us!

When citizen Fauchet informed the Convention of the great bargains that were offered him here, when they found at what a low rate “the consciences of the pretended patrons of America” were selling off, it would be to contradict every maxim of trade, to suppose that the purity of their principles, and the morals of their nation, would prevent them from enabling him to make a purchase; and particularly at the important moment, when the Treaty with Great Britain was to be ratified or rejected. There was, indeed, one difficulty; and that was, the Treasury of the Convention was nearly as empty as father Joseph’s purse, or the pouch of his mendicant pilgrim. And, as to assignats, besides their being a tell-tale currency, they never would, as we have no guillotine in the country, have been convertible into food and raiment; so that, of course, they would have been as despicable and despised waste paper, as the Aurora of Philadelphia, the Argus of New-York, or Chronicle of Boston. This difficulty, however, formidable as it was, appeared as nothing in competition with the object in view. We may well suppose that their indefatigable financiers would make a last effort; would give the nation another squeeze, to come at the means of defeating the Treaty. They have a greater variety of imposts than Mr. Hamilton or even Mr. Pitt; and in a pressing occasion like the one before us, they had only to set the national razor ^{Ref 058} at work for two or three days, upon the heads of the bankers and merchants, to collect the sum required: or, if these should be grown scarce, a drowning of four or five thousand women might bring them in ear-bobs and other trinkets ^{Ref 059} sufficient to stir up fifty town-meetings, and to cause two-thirds of the Federal Senators to be roasted in effigy.

Let any one look at the conduct of the leaders in this opposition to the treaty, and believe, if he can, that they were not actuated by some powerful motive which they dared not openly to avow. They began to emit their anathemas against it, long before it was even laid before the Senate. Mr. Randolph protests, that he never divulged its contents to any one. How he came to imagine this unasked-for declaration necessary in his Vindication, I know not; but this I know, that almost every article of it was attacked in the democratic papers, immediately after it was received by the President, and that too with such a confidence of its being what it has since appeared to be, that it requires something more than the protestation of Mr. Randolph, to persuade me that it was not divulged before its appearance from Mr. Bache’s press.

And who has forgotten the diligence of the opposers, the moment the treaty was published? Did they give it time to circulate? Did they let it come before the people as public acts in general do, and leave them to form a fair and unprejudiced opinion on it? On the contrary, was not every spring put in motion to prepossess them; to fix in their minds a hatred to the measure, that truth would not be able to remove? How can we account for individuals quitting their homes, neglecting their business, and sacrificing to appearance, their interests, to carry this instrument to the extremities of the Union, and there form combinations against it in order to intimidate the President from a ratification?

Will any one believe, then, that the President, with this on his mind, stood in need of British influence to determine on a ratification? What other determination could he possibly take? Was he, though he saw the pit open before his eyes, to plunge headlong into it? Was he, after having discovered the conspiracy, tamely to yield to its machinations, and assist in the ruin of his country? There was but one course for him to pursue to make the Government respected, and blast all the hopes of the conspirators, and that was to ratify the Treaty. By this act he preserved to us the inestimable blessings of peace, gave stability to the Constitution, not only for one, but for many sessions, by a legal and manly exercise of the powers it has vested in him, convinced the French that the interests of the Union are not to be sacrificed to her vengeance and caprice, and showed to the whole world, that we wish to live in friendship with all nations, but that we are determined to be the slaves of none. And yet this act, Mr. Randolph would persuade us, was the work of a British faction!

Thus has the Vindicator failed in all his attempts. On the article of corruption, of which we before doubted, we now doubt no longer; and as to his indirect accusation against the President, it only serves to show that one who, with unblushing front, can ask a bribe, will never be ashamed to publish his ingratitude and apostacy.