Of course the convention was on its face a temporary and provisional one, but in the worst possible form of prospective termination. It was to cease at a convenient time. But how should that convenient time be ascertained? It is plain that such a stipulation, while professedly not disposing of the present controversy, had within itself the germ of a fresh one, for the two Governments might at any moment fall into dispute on the question whether that convenient time had or had not arrived. The Senate of the United States anticipated and prevented this question by the only possible expedient; that is, the designation of a precise date. This being done, the remaining parts of the second article became superfluous and useless, for as all the provisions of the convention would expire in eight years, it would necessarily follow that negotiations must be renewed within that period, more especially as the operation of the amendment which covered the whole convention was that even the stipulation of peace in the first article became temporary and expired in eight years, whereas that article, and that article alone, was permanent according to the original tenor of the convention.
The convention thus amended, being submitted to the First Consul, was ratified by him, his act of acceptance being accompanied with the following declaratory note:
The Government of the United States having added in its ratification that the convention should be in force for the space of eight years, and having omitted the second article, the Government of the French Republic consents to accept, ratify, and confirm the above convention with the addition importing that the convention shall be in force for the space of eight years and with the retrenchment of the second article: Provided, That by this retrenchment the two States renounce the respective pretensions which are the object of the said article.
The convention, as thus ratified by the First Consul, having been again submitted to the Senate of the United States, that body resolved that "they considered the convention as fully ratified," and returned the same to the President for promulgation, and it was accordingly promulgated in the usual form by President Jefferson.
Now it is clear that in simply resolving that "they considered the convention as fully ratified" the Senate did in fact abstain from any express declaration of dissent or assent to the construction put by the First Consul on the retrenchment of the second article. If any inference beyond this can be drawn from their resolution, it is that they regarded the proviso annexed by the First Consul to his declaration of acceptance as foreign to the subject, as nugatory, or as without consequence or effect. Notwithstanding this proviso, they considered the ratification as full. If the new proviso made any change in the previous import of the convention, then it was not full; and in considering it a full ratification they in substance deny that the proviso did in any respect change the tenor of the convention.
By the second article, as it originally stood, neither Republic had relinquished its existing rights or pretensions, either as to other previous treaties or the indemnities mutually due or claimed, but only deferred the consideration of them to a convenient time. By the amendment of the Senate of the United States that convenient time, instead of being left indefinite, was fixed at eight years; but no right or pretension of either party was surrendered or abandoned.
If the Senate erred in assuming that the proviso added by the First Consul did not affect the question, then the transaction would amount to nothing more than to have raised a new question, to be disposed of on resuming the negotiations, namely, the question whether the proviso of the First Consul did or not modify or impair the effect of the convention as it had been ratified by the Senate.
That such, and such only, was the true meaning and effect of the transaction; that it was not, and was not intended to be, a relinquishment by the United States of any existing claim on France, and especially that it was not an abandonment of any claims of individual citizens, nor the set off of these against any conceded national obligations to France, is shown by the fact that President Jefferson did at once resume and prosecute to successful conclusion negotiations to obtain from France indemnification for the claims of citizens of the United States existing at the date of that convention; for on the 30th of April, 1803, three treaties were concluded at Paris between the United States of America and the French Republic, one of which embraced the cession of Louisiana; another stipulated for the payment of 60,000,000 francs by the United States to France; and a third provided that, for the satisfaction of sums due by France to citizens of the United States at the conclusion of the convention of September 30, 1800, and in express compliance with the second and fifth articles thereof, a further sum of 20,000,000 francs should be appropriated and paid by the United States. In the preamble to the first of these treaties, which ceded Louisiana, it is set forth that—
The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the French people, desiring to remove all source of misunderstanding relative to objects of discussion mentioned in the second and fifth articles of the convention of the 8th Vendémiaire, an 9 (30th September, 1800), relative to the rights claimed by the United States in virtue of the treaty concluded at Madrid the 27th of October, 1795, between His Catholic Majesty and the said United States, and willing to strengthen the union and friendship which at the time of the said convention was happily reestablished between the two nations, have respectively named their plenipotentiaries, ... who ... have agreed to the following articles.
Here is the most distinct and categorical declaration of the two Governments that the matters of claim in the second article of the convention of 1800 had not been ceded away, relinquished, or set off, but they were still subsisting subjects of demand against France. The same declaration appears in equally emphatic language in the third of these treaties, bearing the same date, the preamble of which recites that—