If they agreed to this amendment, they must necessarily expect from the French Republic fresh insult and aggression; for it seemed to admit that hitherto no insult had been intended.
The amendment might be divided, Mr. S. said, into two parts. The first went to vindicate the French from any intentional insults towards this country: it even held out an idea that the Executive ought to offer some concessions to France, and even designated the kind of concession. He should, therefore, without taking notice of what the gentleman had said about the political parties of this country, or what he had said respecting himself personally, confine his observations to the points in question.
The first point was, whether the conduct of France was justifiable in rejecting our Minister, and sending him from the Republic in the manner they had done?
He thought the committee had abundant materials before them completely to refute the first proposition; and he was surprised, knowing that these documents were in the hands of every member, that the gentleman from Virginia could expect to impress their minds with the idea that no indignity whatever had been offered by the French Government to this country in that transaction.
Mr. S. said, that it appeared most clearly that the French Directory intended to treat this Government with marked indignity; for though the gentleman from Virginia suggested an opinion that their refusal to receive Mr. Pinckney was owing altogether to his not being invested with extraordinary powers, this was evidently not the case, as the Directory had been well informed as to the character in which Mr. Pinckney came, before they received his letters of credence, as appears by the letter of M. Delacroix to Mr. Monroe, styling Mr. Pinckney his successor, and by other documents communicated by the President, (which he read.) There was no doubt, then, with respect to the Directory being well acquainted with the character in which Mr. Pinckney went to France, viz: as Minister Plenipotentiary or ordinary Minister; but, after keeping him in suspense near two months, on the day after the news arrived of Bonaparte's successes in Italy, he was ordered, by a peremptory mandate, in writing, to leave the French Republic. This mandate was accompanied by a circumstance which was certainly intended to convey an insult; it was addressed to him as an Anglo-American, a term, it is true, they sometimes used to distinguish the inhabitants of the United States from those of the West India Islands, but, in his opinion, here evidently designed as a term of reproach, as he believed no other similar instance could be mentioned. Upon this circumstance, however, he laid no stress; the other indignities which our Minister had received were too great to require any weight to be given to this circumstance.
The gentleman from Virginia had confined the complaints of the French Government to three articles of the British Treaty; though, if the committee referred to the letter of Mr. Delacroix, it would be found that they did not confine them within so narrow a compass. They complain, first, of the inexecution of treaties; there are several points of complaint relative to that head. 2d. Complaints against the decrees of our Federal Courts. 3d. Against the law of June, 1794; and, 4th. Against the Treaty with Great Britain. Yet the gentleman confines himself altogether to the latter. And really he did not expect at this time of day, after the subject had been fully discussed, and determined, and the objections refuted over and over again, that any gentleman would have endeavored to revive and prove their complaints on this head well founded. The three articles were: 1st, that free ships did not make free goods; 2d, the contraband article; and 3d, the provision article.
1. The stipulation with respect to neutral vessels not making neutral goods in the British Treaty, was not contrary to the law of nations; it only provided that the law of nations was to be carried into effect in the manner most convenient for the United States. But this doctrine, he said, was no new thing. It had been acknowledged most explicitly by Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, in July, 1793, and was so declared to the Minister of France; yet no objection was made to it until the British Treaty was ratified, though long previous thereto French property was captured on board our vessels. Mr. Jefferson, writing on this subject to the French Minister, said: "You have no shadow of complaint;" the thing was so perfectly clear and well understood by the law of nations. This happened as long ago as July or August, 1793. But two years afterwards, when the British Treaty was promulgated, the whole country was thrown into a flame by admitting this very same doctrine. France herself had always acted under this law of nations, when not restrained by treaty: in Valin's Ordinances of France this clearly appears. The armed neutrality was confined to the then existing war; Russia herself, the creator of the armed neutrality, entered into a compact with England, in 1793, expressly contravening its principles. The principle was then not established by our Treaty with England; but such being the acknowledged law of nations, it was merely stipulated that it should be exercised in the manner least injurious to us.
2. The next article of complaint was with respect to contraband goods. If gentlemen will consult the law of nations, they will find that the articles mentioned in the British Treaty are by the law of nations contraband articles. They will find that in all the treaties with Denmark and Sweden, Great Britain had made the same stipulation. Indeed, the gentleman had acknowledged that it was so stated by some writers on the law of nations; but he wished to derogate from the authority of those writers, in the same way as Mr. Genet, in his correspondence with Mr. Jefferson, had called them "worm-eaten folios and musty aphorisms;" to Vattel might be added Valin's Ordinances, a very respectable work in France. How, then, can the gentleman with truth say that we have deviated from the law of nations?
3. The last point which the gentleman took notice of was the provision article. There was no doubt that this Government would never allow provisions to be deemed contraband, except when going to a besieged or blockaded port. Though he made this declaration, yet it was but candid to acknowledge that this was stated by Vattel to be the law of nations. [He read an extract from Vattel.]
When this was stated by Lord Grenville to Mr. Pinckney, our then Minister in London, Mr. Pinckney acknowledged it to be so stated in Vattel, but very ingeniously argued that France could not be considered as in the situation mentioned in Vattel, since provisions were cheaper there than they were in England, and therefore the case did not apply. When our Envoy was sent to London, both parties were tenacious on this ground. Our Minister was unwilling to agree to this construction of the law of nations; but the British Minister insisted upon it, and if there had not been some compromise, the negotiation must have been broken off, and a war probably ensued. The result was, therefore, that, without admitting it to be the law of nations, it was agreed that where provisions were contraband by the law of nations, they should be paid for, but not confiscated, as the law of nations (admitting that construction) would have authorized. Therefore some advantage was secured to France, for if Great Britain had confiscated our vessels going to France with provisions, it would certainly have damped the ardor of our citizens employed in that commerce; but under this regulation our merchants were certain of being paid for their cargoes, whether they arrived in France or were carried into England. These were the three grounds of objection which the gentleman from Virginia had stated as grounds of complaint by the French against the British Treaty.