Minister to France
Strange as it appears, there is no doubt that Mr. Gallatin was at this time heartily weary of political life, and seriously contemplated a permanent retirement to the banks of the Monongahela. He naturally enough declined a nomination to Congress, which was tendered him by the Philadelphia district. His tastes were not for the violence and turbulence of the popular house.
Madison left him full time to decide whether he could arrange his private affairs so as to accept the mission to Paris. In November he positively declined. He considered the compensation as incompetent to the support of a minister in the style in which he was expected to live. His private income was at this time about twenty-five hundred dollars a year. Monroe pressed him earnestly not to quit the public service, but the year closed and Mr. Gallatin had not made up his mind. In the situation of France, which he considered “would under her present dynasty be for some years a vassal of her great rival,” he did not consider the mission important, and his private fortune was limited to a narrow competence. “I do not wish,” he wrote to Monroe, “to accumulate any property. I will not do my family the injury of impairing the little I have. My health is frail; they may soon lose me, and I will not leave them dependent on the bounty of others.” But being again earnestly pressed, he on January 2, 1816, accepted the appointment. To Jefferson he wrote that he would not conceal 'that he did not feel yet old enough nor had philosophy enough to go into retirement and abstract himself wholly from public affairs.'
In April, Madison notified Mr. Gallatin of Dallas's probable retirement from the Treasury, and offered him the post if he cared to return to it. He was perfectly aware of his supreme fitness for the direction of the Treasury, and he declined with reluctance, because he was disturbed by the suspension of specie payments. Remembering Madison's weakness in 1812 on the subject of the renewal of the bank charter, which Gallatin considered necessary in the situation of the finances, he could hardly have felt a desire to return to the cabinet in that or indeed in any other capacity. He was perfectly conscious that as leader of the House of Representatives, as secretary of the treasury, and as negotiator of the Ghent treaty, he had brought into the triumvirate all its practical statesmanship. His short career abroad had opened to him a new source of intellectual pleasure. He had earned a right to some hours of ease. Diplomacy at that period, when communication was uncertain and difficult, was perforce less restricted than in these latter days, when ambassadors are little more than foreign clerks of the State Department without even the freedom of a chief of bureau. Gallatin felt entirely at home, and was happy in this peculiar sphere. There was no time in his life when he would not have gladly surrendered all political power for the enjoyment of intellectual ease, the pursuit of science, and the atmosphere of society of the higher order of culture in whatever field. And Paris was then, as it is still, the centre of intellectual and social civilization.
Jefferson rejoiced in Gallatin's appointment to France, and rightly judged that he would be of great service there. Of Louis XVIII., however, Jefferson had a poor opinion. He thought him 'a fool and a bigot, but, bating a little duplicity, honest and meaning well.' Jefferson could give Gallatin no letters. He had 'no acquaintances left in France; some were guillotined, some fled, some died, some are exiled, and he knew of nobody left but Lafayette.' With Destutt de Tracy, an intimate friend of Lafayette, Jefferson was in correspondence. Indeed, he was engaged on the translation of Tracy's work on political economy, the best, in Jefferson's opinion, that had ever appeared.[21]
Gallatin reached Paris with his family on July 9, 1816, and had an interview with the Duc de Richelieu, the minister of Louis XVIII., two days later. The conversation turned upon the sympathy for Bonaparte in the United States, which Richelieu could not understand; but Gallatin explained that it was not extended to him as the despot of France, but as the most formidable enemy of England. Richelieu warned him of the prejudices which might be aroused against the reigning family 'by ex-kings and other emigrants of the same description' who had lately removed to the United States. This was an allusion to Jerome, who had fled from the throne of Westphalia to the banks of the Delaware. The king gave Gallatin an audience on the 11th, when he presented his credentials. His reception both by his majesty and the princes was, he wrote to Monroe, “what is called gracious.” Louis the Eighteenth was a Bourbon to the ends of his fingers. He had the bonhommie dashed with malice which characterized the race. None could better appreciate than he the vein of good-natured satire, the acquired tone of French society, which was to Mr. Gallatin a natural gift. Mr. Gallatin was not only kindly but familiarly received at court; and at the petits soupers, which were the delight of the epicurean king, his majesty on more than one occasion shelled the crawfish for the youthful daughter of the republican ambassador. An anecdote is preserved of the king's courteous malice. To a compliment paid Mr. Gallatin on his French, the king added, “but I think my English is better than yours.”
Gallatin's first negotiations were to obtain indemnity for the captures under the Berlin and Milan decrees; but although the Duc de Richelieu never for a moment hinted that the government of the Restoration was not responsible for the acts of Napoleon, yet he stated that the mass of injuries for which compensation was demanded by other governments was so great that indemnity must be limited to the most flagrant cases. They would pay for vessels burnt at sea, but would go no farther. In spite of Mr. Gallatin's persistency no advance was made in the negotiation. A minor matter gave him some annoyance. On July 4, 1816, at a public dinner, the postmaster at Baltimore proposed a toast which, by its disrespect, gave umbrage to the king. Hyde de Neuville, the French minister to the United States, demanded the dismissal of the offender. If our institutions and habits as well as public opinion had not forbidden compliance with this request, the dictatorial tone of De Neuville was sufficient bar. Richelieu could not be made to understand the reason for the refusal, and while disclaiming any idea of using force, said that the government would show its dissatisfaction in its own way. This seemed to intimate an indefinite postponement of a consideration of American demands, and would have rendered Mr. Gallatin's further residence useless as well as unpleasant; but French dignity got the better of what Gallatin termed, “the sickly sentimentality which existed on the subject of personal abuse of the king,” and the insignificant incident was not allowed to interfere with friendly intercourse.
In 1817 Mr. Gallatin was engaged not only in advising Mr. Adams at London upon the points of a commercial treaty with Great Britain, but also, together with Mr. William Eustis, minister to the Netherlands, in a negotiation with that government.
The commission met at the Hague, Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Van der Kemp representing Holland. The subjects were the treaty of 1782 between the States-general of the Netherlands and the United States, the repeal of discriminating duties, and the participation of the United States in the trade with the Dutch East Indies. The basis of a treaty could not be agreed upon, and the whole matter was referred back to the two governments, the American commissioners recommending to the President a repeal of duties discriminating against vessels of the Netherlands, which would no doubt prevent future exaction of extra tonnage duties imposed on American vessels by that government. These negotiations occupied the late summer months. At the end of September Mr. Gallatin was again at his post in Paris.
In June, 1818, Mr. Richard Rush, who owed his introduction into public life to Mr. Gallatin, was appointed minister to England, Adams returning to the United States to take the portfolio of State in President Monroe's cabinet. Gallatin was joined to Rush, for the conduct of negotiations with Great Britain, rendered necessary by the approaching expiration of the commercial convention of July 3, 1815, which had been limited to four years. The general field of disputed points was again entered. It included the questions of impressment, the fisheries, the boundaries, and indemnity for slaves. The commissioners were supported by a temper of the American people different from that which prevailed when Jay and Gallatin respectively undertook the delicate work of negotiation in 1794 and 1814. A compromise was arrived at, which was signed on October 20, 1818. The articles on maritime rights and impressment were set aside. A convention was made for ten years in regard to the fisheries, the northwest boundary, and other points, and the commercial convention of 1815 was renewed. The English claim to the navigation of the Mississippi was finally disposed of, and the article concerning the West India trade was referred to the President. The arrangement of the fishery question disturbed Mr. Gallatin, who found himself compelled to sign an agreement which left the United States in a worse situation in that respect than before the war of 1812. But as the British courts would certainly uphold the construction by their government of the treaty of 1783, our vessels, when seized, would be condemned and a collision would immediately ensue. This, and the critical condition of our Spanish relations, left no choice between concession and war. A short time afterward Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington expressed friendly dispositions, and the mooted points of impressment and the West India trade were considered by them to be near an arrangement. The right of British armed vessels to examine American crews was abandoned in the convention itself.