Sweden and Denmark proposed to maintain, jointly with the United States, a naval force in the Mediterranean to protect their mutual commerce from the Barbary Powers. Marshall declined because of our treaties with those piratical Governments; and also because, "until ... actual hostilities shall cease between" France and America, "to station American frigates in the Mediterranean would be a hazard, to which our infant Navy ought not perhaps to be exposed."[1141]
Incidents amusing, pathetic, and absurd arose, such as announcements of the birth of princes, to which the Secretary of State must prepare answers;[1142] the stranding of foreign sailors on our shores, whose plight we must relieve;[1143] the purchase of jewels for the Bey of Tunis, who was clamoring for the glittering bribes.[1144]
In such fashion went on the daily routine work of his department while Marshall was at the head of the Cabinet.
The only grave matters requiring Marshall's attention were the perplexing tangle of the British debts and the associated questions of British impressment of American seamen and interference with American commerce.
Under the sixth article of the Jay Treaty a joint commission of five members had been appointed to determine the debts due British subjects. Two of the Commissioners were British, two Americans, and the fifth chosen by lot. Chance made this deciding member British also. This Commission, sitting at Philadelphia, failed to agree. The treaty provided, as we have seen, that the United States should pay such British debts existing at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War as the creditors were not able to collect because of the sequestration laws and other "legal impediments," or because, during the operation of these statutes, the debtor had become insolvent.
Having a majority of the Commission, the British members made rules which threw the doors wide open.[1145] "They go the length to make the United States at once the debtor for all the outstanding debts of British subjects contracted before the peace of 1783.... The amount of the claims presented exceeds nineteen millions of dollars."[1146] And this was done by the British representatives with overbearing personal insolence. Aside from the injustice of the British contention, this bullying of the American members[1147] made the work of the Commission all but impossible.
A righteous popular indignation arose. "The construction put upon the Treaty by the British Commissioners ... will never be submitted to by this country.... The [British] demand ... excites much ill blood."[1148] The American Commissioners refused to attend further sittings of the Board. Thereupon, the British Government withdrew its members of the associate Commission sitting in London, under the seventh article of the treaty, to pass upon claims of American citizens for property destroyed by the British.
The situation was acute. It was made still sharper by the appointment of our second mission to France. For, just as France had regarded Jay's mission and treaty as offensive, so now Great Britain looked upon the Ellsworth mission as unfriendly. As a way out of the difficulty, the American Government insisted upon articles explanatory of the sixth article of the Jay Treaty which would define exactly what claims the Commission should consider.[1149] The British Government refused and suggested a new commission.[1150]
This was the condition that faced Marshall when he became Secretary of State. War with Great Britain was in the air from other causes and the rupture of the two Commissions made the atmosphere thicker. On June 24, 1800, Marshall wrote the President that we ought "still to press an amicable explanation of the sixth article of our treaty"; perhaps during the summer or autumn the British Cabinet might feel "more favorable to an accommodation." But he "cannot help fearing that ... the British Ministry" intends "to put such a construction on the law of nations ... as to throw into their hands some equivalent to the probable claims of British creditors on the United States."[1151]
Lord Grenville then suggested to Rufus King, our Minister at London, that the United States pay a gross sum to Great Britain in settlement of the whole controversy.[1152] Marshall wondered whether this simple way out of the tangle could "afford just cause of discontent to France?"[1153] Adams thought not. "We surely have a right to pay our honest debts in the manner least inconvenient to ourselves and no foreign power has anything to do with it," said the President. Adams, however, foresaw many other difficulties;[1154] but Marshall concluded that, on the whole, a gross payment was the best solution in case the British Government could not be induced to agree to explanatory articles.[1155]