He said, they had only three alternatives. Either to give aid to the Treaty, continue to bear the insults of Great Britain, or else to determine resolutely on the dernier resort, war.
Mr. Griswold said, that in his opinion, the extensive view which the committee were taking of the merits of the Treaty with Great Britain was unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States; that he did not believe any part of the Treaty-making power had been delegated to the House of Representatives; and that the committee might with as much propriety examine the merits of the constitution itself, for the purpose of deciding whether they would execute it or not, as to examine the Treaty in the manner which had been adopted in the committee. He had, on a former occasion, delivered his opinions on that subject, and he would not attempt to repeat them; but since the committee had thought proper to take an extensive view of the merits of the Treaty, he would follow the example which had been set him, and submit a few observations upon that subject—more particularly as he believed that no discussion would prove injurious to that instrument. He should not, however, attempt to take a very extensive view of the subject, as gentlemen who had preceded him had exhausted almost every part of the subject and left little to be said at that period of the debate.
Mr. G. said the Treaty embraced three great objects:
1. The execution of those parts of the Treaty of 1783, which remained unexecuted.
2. The settlement of disputes.
3. Stipulations for regulating the commercial and other intercourse between the two nations.
He said that it would be agreed on every side of the House that these objects were important; and if they had been justly and fairly secured by the stipulations of the Treaty, it would not be said that the committee ought to feel dissatisfied with that instrument. He believed that this was really the case, and that the United States had no just cause to complain of the terms therein contained.
Several objections, however, had been made to that part of the Treaty which provided for the execution of the Treaty of 1783. It had been said that this Treaty did not provide for every part of the Treaty of Peace which remained unexecuted; and that conditions were annexed to the execution of those parts of that Treaty which had been provided for highly injurious to the interest of the United States. He said, if those objections were well founded, they formed a very serious objection to the present Treaty: but he could not find them by comparing or examining the two Treaties. The only article of the Treaty of Peace which it was said had been violated by the British Government, and was not provided for by the present Treaty, was that which respected the negroes and other property of the American inhabitants. He said he would not detain the committee with many remarks on this part of the subject, as it had been very fully and ably explained by gentlemen who had gone before him: he only mentioned it for the purpose of reading that part of the journal of Mr. Adams, one of the American negotiators of the peace, which immediately related to this subject. The same journal had been already read by different gentlemen, in detached parts, but he wished to bring the whole journal at one view before the committee. He said, however, that he ought to repeat what had been already said on the floor, that the article in question did not want any exterior aid to assist the committee with an explanation. The words of the article were certain and explicit; they declared that the evacuation should be made "without carrying away any negroes or other property belonging to the American inhabitants;" and as it was universally agreed that the negroes who had been carried away consisted either of those who had fled from their masters during the war, on a promise of emancipation, or of those who had been taken as plunder in the period of hostility, no doubt could exist but that in all those cases the property in the negroes was changed; that they were no longer the property of American inhabitants, and of course it was no violation of the Treaty to carry them away. And whatever might have since been said on that subject, he was convinced that the American Commissioners, at the close of the negotiation, had no idea of including in the Treaty of Peace a stipulation to secure a restoration of negroes then in the possession of the British army. To evince this fact, he said he would now read the journal he had before alluded to. [He read some paragraphs from that journal.]
Mr. G. said that it appeared, from the journal he had read, on what ground the negotiation respecting the negroes stood. The British agent claimed a restitution of confiscated estates. To rebut this demand, the American Commissioners, among other things, claimed compensation for negroes and other property which had been taken as plunder in different periods of the war. Finding, however, that no agreement could be obtained on these contested points, they were all relinquished as impracticable; and the claim for negroes, which had been made for no other purpose than to rebut the claim for confiscated estates, was given up of course, and, at the moment of signing the Treaty, the article in question was inserted—not to secure a restitution of property which had been changed by the events of the war, but to secure by stipulation, that the evacuations should be made without any destruction, or carrying away property really belonging to the American inhabitants. He said that it had always been a matter of surprise to him that any gentleman had put a different construction on this article; and he thought the parties had done wisely in excluding from the present Treaty a claim which did not possess even the shadow of justice.