"It is no," shouts Pinckney; "no; not a sixpence!"
The persistent Hottenguer does not desist. He tells the envoys that they do not know the kind of men they are dealing with. The Directory, he insists, disregard the justice of American claims; care nothing even for the French colonies; "consider themselves as perfectly invulnerable" from the United States. Money is the only thing that will interest such terrible men. The Americans, parrying, ask whether, even if they give money, Talleyrand will furnish proofs that it will produce results. Hottenguer evades the question. A long discussion ensues.
Pay the bribe, again and again urges the irritated but tenacious go-between. Does not your Government "know that nothing is to be obtained here without money?"
"Our Government had not even suspected such a state of things," declare the amazed Americans.
"Well," answers Hottenguer, "there is not an American in Paris who could not have given that information.... Hamburgh and other states of Europe were obliged to buy peace ... nothing could resist" the power of France; let the envoys think of "the danger of a breach with her."[632]
Thus far Pinckney mostly had spoken for the envoys. Marshall now took up the American case. Few utterances ever made by him more clearly reveal the mettle of the man; and none better show his conception of the American Nation's rights, dignity, and station among the Governments of the world.
CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY
"I told him [Hottenguer]," writes Marshall, "that ... no nation estimated her [France's] power more highly than America or wished more to be on amicable terms with her, but that one object was still dearer to us than the friendship of France which was our national independence. That America had taken a neutral station. She had a right to take it. No nation had a right to force us out of it. That to lend ... money to a belligerent power abounding in every thing requisite for war but money was to relinquish our neutrality and take part in the war. To lend this money under the lash & coercion of France was to relinquish the government of ourselves & to submit to a foreign government imposed on us by force," Marshall declared. "That we would make at least one manly struggle before we thus surrendered our national independence.
"Our case was different from that of the minor nations of Europe," he explained. "They were unable to maintain their independence & did not expect to do so. America was a great, & so far as concerned her self-defense, a powerful nation. She was able to maintain her independence & must deserve to lose it if she permitted it to be wrested from her. France & Britain have been at war for near fifty years of the last hundred & might probably be at war for fifty years of the century to come."