public credit; and that, therefore, the advantages offered, were insufficient to induce an acceptance of the proposition.

The reply of the minister, as well as his other communications made about the same time, evinced the spirit with which he was governed.

"Without entering into the financial reasons," he said in a letter of the 14th of June, "which operate this refusal, without endeavoring to prove to you, that it tends to accomplish the infernal system of the king of England, and of the other kings, his accomplices to destroy, by famine, the French republicans and liberty, I attend, on the present occasion, only to the calls of my country," &c.

He requested the president to direct an adjustment of the amount due to France, to enable him to make assignments of the same to American merchants or farmers, in payment for provisions they might furnish, agreeably to his instructions.

Questions of serious importance soon arose, not only with regard to belligerent and neutral rights and duties under the general law of nations; but also under the treaties existing between the two countries, on which the American executive and the French minister unfortunately differed. In a conference with the secretary of state, soon after his reception, Mr. Genet spoke of his proceedings at Charleston, and expressed a hope, "that the president had not so absolutely decided against the measure, but that he would hear what was to be said in support of it." He added, that he would write him a note, justifying his conduct under the treaty between the two nations; but if the president should finally determine otherwise, he must submit, as his instructions enjoined him to do what was agreeable to the Americans.

In pursuance of this intimation, he soon after addressed a note to the secretary of state, in answer to one of the 15th of May, to Mr. Ternant, his predecessor. This was the commencement of a correspondence between the new French minister and the American executive; a correspondence which, whether viewed in relation to the claims and complaints on the part of the French

government, or to the style and manner in which they were presented, stands unequalled in the history of diplomacy.

That language, such as this correspondence contained, should have been used by a foreign minister to the president of the United States, could hardly have obtained belief among those unacquainted with the spirit of that period, had not the correspondence itself been submitted to their examination.

The French minister claimed the right of arming vessels in our ports, and of enlisting American citizens to cruize against nations with whom the United States were at peace; and insisted that the American government could neither prohibít such armaments, or punish those who should thus engage in the war, on the side of France. In his first note on this subject, after acknowledging that by his order, vessels had been armed and commissioned in the port of Charleston, and that these vessels, manned in part by American citizens, had taken and brought prizes into American ports, he says, "I ought, by a sincere exposition of my conduct, to put you in a capacity to judge, whether I have encroached on the sovereignty of the American nation, its laws, and its principles of government. The vessels armed at Charleston belong to French houses; they are commanded and manned by French citizens, or by Americans, who, at the moment they entered the service of France, in order to defend their brothers and their friends, knew only the treaties and the laws of the United States, no article of which imposes on them the painful injustice of abandoning us, in the midst of the dangers which surround us. It is then evident, sir, that these armaments cannot be matter of offense in the citizens of the United States; and that those who are on board of our vessels, have renounced the immediate protection of their country, on taking part with us.”

These novel doctrines were resisted by the American executive; and the secretary of state, in reply informed the French minister, that arming and equipping vessels in the ports of the United States, to cruise against nations with whom they were at peace, was incompatible with their territorial sovereignty.

That it was the right of every nation "to prohibit acts of sovereignty from being exercised by any other within its limits, and the duty of a neutral nation to prohibit such as would injure one of the warring powers; that the granting military commissions within the United States, by any other authority than their own, was an infringement on their sovereignty, and particularly so, when granted to their own citizens, to lead them to commit acts contrary to the duties they owed their own country; that the departure of vessels, thus illegally equipped, from the ports of the United States, would be but an acknowledgment of respect, analogous to the breach of it, while it is necessary, on their part, as an evidence of their faithful neutrality."

The French minister, instead of submitting to the opinion of the president, declared to the secretary of state, that this opinion was contrary to the principles of natural right, to the usage of nations, to the connection which united the two countries, and even to the president's proclamation.

"Every obstruction by the government of the United States," he said, "to the arming of French vessels, must be an attempt on the rights of man, upon which repose the independence and laws of the United States; a violation of the ties, which unite the people of France and of America; and even a manifest contradiction of the system of neutrality of the president; for, in fact, if our merchant vessels, or others, are not allowed to arm them. selves, when the French alone are resisting the league of all the tyrants against the liberty of the people, they will be exposed to inevitable ruin in going out of the United States, which is certainly not the intention of the people of America.

"Their fraternal voice has resounded from every quarter around me, and their accents are not equivocal-they are as pure as the hearts of those by whom they are expressed, and the more they have touched my sensibility, the more they must interest, in the happiness of America, the nation I represent; the more I wish, sir, that the federal government should observe, as far as in their power, the public engagements contracted by both nations; and that by this generous and prudent conduct, they

will give, at least to the world, the example of a true neutrality, which does not consist in a cowardly abandonment of their friends in the moment when danger menaces them, but adhering strictly, if they can do no better, to the obligations they have contracted with them."

The right of arming in American ports, was claimed also by Mr. Genet, under the 17th and 22d articles of the treaty of amity and commerce between the two countries. The president, on the other hand, viewed the 17th article as merely giving to the contracting parties, the right of entering the ports of the other with their prizes, and departing with them freely, but not of arming and manning vessels in their respective ports. A construction was also given by the executive to the 22d article, different from that contended for by the French minister. While the latter claimed that this article expressly gave France the right of arming in the ports of the United States, the president said that it only prohibited foreign privateers from arming in the ports of either party; but did not grant such permission to the contracting parties themselves-that on this point it was silent, and left open and free, to be decided according to circumstances. That a negative stipulation as to privateers of the enemies of France, was not an affirmative one in favor of France herself. This, it was also said, could not have been the intention of the parties when the treaty was made; as such a stipulation on the part of France, would have been inconsistent with her treaties with other powers, then in force. In case of war between the United States and Spain, France by her treaty with the latter, could not permit the vessels of the United States to be armed in her ports.

This, the American government said, must have been the construction put upon this article by France herself, in her treaty with Great Britain, in 1786; by which persons "not being subjects of either crown," were prohibited from arming in the ports of the other. If this had amounted to an affirmative stipulation, that the subjects of the crown of Great Britain, being at war with the United States, might arm in her ports against them, it would have been a direct violation of that arVOL. II.

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ticle. Bound by treaty to refuse to one belligerent the right of arming in our ports, and at liberty to refuse it to the other, the executive said, it would be a breach of neutrality, not to refuse it to the latter. This reasoning, however conclusive, not being in accordance with the views of the French minister, was by no means satisfactory to him.

Nor was he better satisfied with the reasoning of the American executive, as to the right and duty of the United States, to restrain their citizens from hostile acts against nations, with whom they were at peace. "The United States," says the secretary, "being in a state of peace with most of the belligerent powers by treaty, and with all of them by the laws of nature; murders and robberies committed within our territory, or on the high seas, on those with whom we are so at peace, are punishable equally as if committed on our own inhabitants. If I might venture to reason a little formally, without being charged with running into 'subtleties and aphorisms,' I would say, that if one citizen has a right to go to war of his own authority, every citizen has the same. If every citizen has that right, then the nation (which is composed of all its citizens,) has a right to go to war by the authority of its individual citizens. But this is not true, either on the general principles of society or by our constitution, which gives that power to congress alone, and not to the citizens individually. The first position is not true; and no citizen has a right to go to war of his own authority; and for what he does without right, he ought to be punished. Indeed, nothing can be more obviously absurd, than to say that all the citizens may be at war, and yet the nation at peace." To these reasonings, or rather axioms, which it must now appear strange, could be controverted by any one, the French minister applied the epithet of "diplomatic subtleties."

And when the secretary enforced the principles of neutrality advanced by him, by quotations from Vattel, and the most approved writers on national law, Genet calls them "the aphorisms of Vattel, &c." "All the reasonings," he said to the secretary in his answer, " contained in your letter, are ingenious, but I