"I am entitled to safe conduct," cries Marshall; and "the calumny threatened against myself is too contemptible to be credited for a moment by those who would utter it." I "despise" it, exclaims the insulted Virginian.[731] Thus back and forth went this fantastic dance of corrupt diplomacy and cautious but defiant honesty.
At the long last, the interminable Gerry finished his review of Marshall's reply to Talleyrand and made a lengthy and unctuous speech to his colleagues on the righteousness of his own motives. Pinckney, intolerably bored and disgusted, told Gerry what he thought of him. The New Englander peevishly charged Marshall and Pinckney with concealing their motives.
"It is false, sir," shouted Pinckney. Gerry, he said, was the one who had concealed from his colleagues, not only his purposes, but his clandestine appointments with Talleyrand. Pinckney rode Gerry hard, "and insisted in plain terms on the duplicity which had been practiced [by Gerry] upon us both." The latter ridiculously explained, evaded, and, in general, acted according to the expectation of those who warned Adams against his appointment. Finally, however, Marshall's reply was signed by all three and sent to Talleyrand.[732]
The calmness, dignity, and conclusiveness of Marshall's rejoinder can be appreciated only by reading the entire document. Marshall begins his final statement of the American case and refutation of the French claims by declaring what he had stated before, that the American envoys "are ready to consider and to compensate the injury, if the American Government has given just cause of complaint to that of France"; and points out that the negotiations which the American envoys had sought fruitlessly for six months, if taken up even now, would "demonstrate the sincerity of this declaration."[733] This offer Marshall repeats again and again.
Before taking up Talleyrand's complaints in detail, he states that if the envoys cannot convince Talleyrand that the American Government is not in the wrong on a single point Talleyrand mentions, the envoys will prove their good faith; and thus, with an offer to compensate France for any wrong, "a base for an accommodation" is established. Every grievance Talleyrand had made is then answered minutely and at great length. History, reason, evidence, march through these pages like infantry, cavalry, and artillery going to battle. Marshall's paper was irresistible. Talleyrand never escaped from it.
In the course of it there is a passage peculiarly applicable to the present day. Answering Talleyrand's complaints about newspapers, Marshall says:—
"The genius of the Constitution, and the opinions of the people of the United States, cannot be overruled by those who administer the Government. Among those principles deemed sacred in America, ... there is no one ... more deeply impressed on the public mind, than the liberty of the press. That this liberty is often carried to excess, that it has sometimes degenerated into licentiousness, is seen and lamented; but the remedy has not been discovered. Perhaps it is an evil inseparable from the good with which it is allied; perhaps it is a shoot which cannot be stripped from the stalk, without wounding vitally the plant from which it is torn."
At any rate, declares Marshall, there is, in America, no redress for "the calumnies and invectives" of the press except "legal prosecution in courts which are alike open to all who consider themselves as injured. Without doubt this abuse of a valuable privilege is [a] matter of peculiar regret when it is extended to the Government of a foreign nation." It never is so extended "with the approbation of the Government of the United States." But, he goes on to say, this is unavoidable "especially on points respecting the rights and interests of America, ... in a nation where public measures are the results of public opinion."
This practice of unrestricted criticism was not directed toward France alone, Marshall assures Talleyrand; "it has been lavished still more profusely on its [France's] enemies and has even been bestowed, with an unsparing hand, on the Federal [American] Government itself. Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of the United States have been pursued and traduced [by American newspapers]." It is plain, therefore, that the American Government cannot influence the American press, the excesses of which are, declares Marshall, "a calamity incident to the nature of liberty."
He reminds Talleyrand that "the same complaint might be urged on the part of the United States. You must well know what degrading and unworthy calumnies against their Government, its principles, and its officers, have been published to the world by French journalists and in French pamphlets." Yet America had not complained of "these calumnies, atrocious as they are.... Had not other causes, infinitely more serious and weighty, interrupted the harmony of the two republics, it would still have remained unimpaired and the mission of the undersigned would never have been rendered necessary."[734]