Becoming impatient at the long-continued delay, Morris finally wrote, very courteously but very firmly, demanding some sort of answer, and this produced a momentary activity, and assurances that he was under a misapprehension as to the delay, etc. The subject of the impressment of American sailors into British men-of-war,—a matter of chronic complaint throughout our first forty years of national life,—now came up; and he remarked to the Duke of Leeds, with a pithy irony that should have made the saying famous: "I believe, my lord, that this is the only instance in which we are not treated as aliens." He proposed a plan which would have at least partially obviated the difficulties in the way of a settlement of the matter, but the duke would do nothing. Neither would he come to any agreement in reference to the exchange of ministers between the two countries.
Then came an interview with Pitt, and Morris, seeing how matters stood, now spoke out perfectly clearly. In answer to the accusations about our failure wholly to perform certain stipulations of the treaty, after reciting the counter accusations of the Americans, he brushed them all aside with the remark: "But, sir, what I have said tends to show that these complaints and inquiries are excellent if the parties mean to keep asunder; if they wish to come together, all such matters should be kept out of sight." He showed that the House of Representatives, in a friendly spirit, had recently decided against laying extraordinary restrictions on British vessels in our ports. "Mr. Pitt said that, instead of restrictions, we ought to give them particular privileges, in return for those we enjoy here. I assured him that I knew of none except that of being impressed, a privilege which of all others we least wished to partake of.... Mr. Pitt said seriously that they had certainly evinced good-will to us by what they had done respecting our commerce. I replied therefore, with like seriousness, that their regulations had been dictated with a view to their own interests; and therefore, as we felt no favor, we owed no obligation." Morris realized thoroughly that they were keeping matters in suspense because their behavior would depend upon the contingencies of war or peace with the neighboring powers; he wished to show that, if they acted thus, we would also bide our time till the moment came to strike a telling blow; and accordingly he ended by telling Pitt, with straightforward directness, a truth that was also a threat: "We do not think it worth while to go to war with you for the [frontier] forts; but we know our rights, and will avail ourselves of them when time and circumstances may suit."
After this conversation he became convinced that we should wait until England herself felt the necessity of a treaty before trying to negotiate one. He wrote Washington "that those who, pursuing the interests of Great Britain, wish to be on the best terms with America, are outnumbered by those whose sour prejudice and hot resentment render them averse to any intercourse except that which may immediately subserve a selfish policy. These men do not yet know America. Perhaps America does not yet know herself.... We are yet in but the seeding-time of national prosperity, and it will be well not to mortgage the crop before it is gathered.... England will not, I am persuaded, enter into a treaty with us unless we give for it more than it is worth now, and infinitely more than it will be worth hereafter. A present bargain would be that of a young heir with an old usurer.... But, should war break out [with a European power], the anti-American party here will agree to any terms; for it is more the taste of the medicine which they nauseate than the quantity of the dose."
Accordingly all negotiations were broken off. In America his enemies blamed Morris for this failure. They asserted that his haughty manners and proud bearing had made him unpopular with the ministers, and that his consorting with members of the opposition had still further damaged his cause. The last assertion was wholly untrue; for he had barely more than met Fox and his associates. But on a third point there was genuine reason for dissatisfaction. Morris had confided his purpose to the French minister at London, M. de la Luzerne, doing so because he trusted to the latter's honor, and did not wish to seem to take any steps unknown to our ally; and he was in all probability also influenced by his constant association and intimacy with the French leaders. Luzerne, however, promptly used the information for his own purposes, letting the English ministers know that he was acquainted with Morris's objects, and thus increasing the weight of France by making it appear that America acted only with her consent and advice. The affair curiously illustrates Jay's wisdom eight years before, when he insisted on keeping Luzerne's superior at that time, Vergennes, in the dark as to our course during the peace negotiations. However, it is not at all likely that Mr. Pitt or the Duke of Leeds were influenced in their course by anything Luzerne said.
Leaving London, Morris made a rapid trip through the Netherlands and up the Rhine. His journals, besides the usual comments on the inns, the bad roads, poor horses, sulky postilions, and the like, are filled with very interesting observations on the character of the country through which he passed, its soil and inhabitants, and the indications they afforded of the national resources. He liked to associate with people of every kind, and he was intensely fond of natural scenery; but, what seems rather surprising in a man of his culture, he apparently cared very little for the great cathedrals, the picture galleries, and the works of art for which the old towns he visited were so famous.
He reached Paris at the end of November, but was almost immediately called to London again, returning in January, 1791, and making three or four similar trips in the course of the year. His own business affairs took up a great deal of his time. He was engaged in very many different operations, out of which he made a great deal of money, being a shrewd business man with a strong dash of the speculator. He had to prosecute a suit against the farmers-general of France for a large quantity of tobacco shipped them by contract; and he gives a very amusing description of the visits he made to the judges before whom the case was to be tried. Their occupations were certainly various, being those of a farrier, a goldsmith, a grocer, a currier, a woolen draper, and a bookseller respectively. As a sample of his efforts, take the following: "Return home and dine. At five resume my visits to my judges, and first wait upon the honorable M. Gillet, the grocer, who is in a little cuddy adjoining his shop, at cards. He assures me that the court are impartial, and alike uninfluenced by farmers, receivers, and grand seigneurs; that they are generally of the same opinion; that he will do everything in his power; and the like. De l'autre côté, perfect confidence in the ability and integrity of the court. Wish only to bring the cause to such a point as that I may have the honor to present a memorial. Am vastly sorry to have been guilty of an intrusion upon the amusements of his leisure hours. Hope he will excuse the solicitude of a stranger, and patronize a claim of such evident justice. The whole goes off very well, though I with difficulty restrain my risible faculties.... A disagreeable scene, the ridicule of which is so strongly painted to my own eyes that I cannot forbear laughing."
He also contracted to deliver Necker twenty thousand barrels of flour for the relief of Paris; wherein, by the way, he lost heavily. He took part in sundry shipping operations. Perhaps the most lucrative business in which he was engaged was in negotiating the sale of wild lands in America. He even made many efforts to buy the Virginian and Pennsylvanian domains of the Fairfaxes and the Penns. On behalf of a syndicate, he endeavored to purchase the American debts to France and Spain; these being purely speculative efforts, as it was supposed that the debts could be obtained at quite a low figure, while, under the new Constitution, the United States would certainly soon make arrangements for paying them off. These various operations entailed a wonderful amount of downright hard work; yet all the while he remained not only a close observer of French politics, but, to a certain extent, even an actor in them.
He called upon Lafayette as soon as he was again established in Paris, after his mission to London. He saw that affairs had advanced to such a pitch in France that "it was no longer a question of liberty, but simply who shall be master." He had no patience with those who wished the king to place himself, as they phrased it, at the head of the Revolution, remarking: "The trade of a revolutionist appears to me a hard one for a prince." What with the folly of one side and the madness of the other, things were going to pieces very rapidly. At one of his old haunts, the club, the "sentiment aristocratique" had made great headway: one of his friends, De Moustin, now in favor with the king and queen, was "as usual on the high ropes of royal prerogative." Lafayette, however, was still wedded to his theories, and did not appear over-glad to see his American friend, all whose ideas and habits of thought were so opposed to his own; while madame was still cooler in her reception. Morris, nothing daunted, talked to his friend very frankly and seriously. He told him that the time had come when all good citizens would be obliged, simply from lack of choice, to cling to the throne; that the executive must be strengthened, and good and able men put into the council. He pronounced the "thing called a constitution" good for nothing, and showed that the National Assembly was rapidly falling into contempt. He pointed out, for the hundredth time, that each country needed to have its own form of government; that an American constitution would not do for France, for the latter required an even higher-toned system than that of England; and that, above all things, France needed stability. He gave the reasons for his advice clearly and forcibly; but poor Lafayette flinched from it, and could not be persuaded to take any effectual step.
It is impossible to read Morris's shrewd comments on the events of the day, and his plans in reference to them, without wondering that France herself should at the crisis have failed to produce any statesmen to be compared with him for force, insight, and readiness to do what was practically best under the circumstances; but her past history for generations had been such as to make it out of the question for her to bring forth such men as the founders of our own government. Warriors, lawgivers, and diplomats she had in abundance. Statesmen who would be both hard-headed and true-hearted, who would be wise and yet unselfish, who would enact laws for a free people that would make that people freer still, and yet hinder them from doing wrong to their neighbors,—statesmen of this order she neither had nor could have had. Indeed, had there been such, it may well be doubted if they could have served France. With a people who made up in fickle ferocity what they lacked in self-restraint, and a king too timid and short-sighted to turn any crisis to advantage, the French statesmen, even had they been as wise as they were foolish, would hardly have been able to arrest or alter the march of events. Morris said bitterly that France was the country where everything was talked of, and where hardly anything was understood.
He told Lafayette that he thought the only hope of the kingdom lay in a foreign war; it is possible that the idea may have been suggested to him by Lafayette's naive remark that he believed his troops would readily follow him into action, but that they would not mount guard when it rained. Morris not only constantly urged the French ministers to make war, but actually drew up a plan of campaign for them. He believed it would turn the popular ardor, now constantly inflamed against the aristocrats, into a new channel, and that "there was no word perhaps in the dictionary which would take the place of aristocrat so readily as Anglais." In proof of the wisdom of his propositions he stated, with absolute truthfulness: "If Britain had declared war in 1774 against the house of Bourbon, the now United States would have bled freely in her cause." He was disgusted with the littleness of the men who, appalled at their own surroundings, and unable to make shift even for the moment, found themselves thrown by chance to the helm, and face to face with the wildest storm that had ever shaken a civilized government. Speaking of one of the new ministers, he remarked: "They say he is a good kind of man, which is saying very little;" and again, "You want just now great men, to pursue great measures." Another time, in advising a war,—a war of men, not of money,—and speaking of the efforts made by the neighboring powers against the revolutionists in Flanders, he told his French friends that they must either suffer for or with their allies; and that the latter was at once the noblest and the safest course.