Remarkable omission respecting cotton.
It may seem singular that the American minister should have consented to prohibit the exportation of cotton, one of the articles enumerated in the clause relating to the West Indian trade. The explanation is curious. In the original draft of the treaty, the United States minister stipulated to prohibit during the continuance of the article in force, all “West Indian productions and manufactures.” The expression was, on reflection, deemed to be too general, and it was agreed to specify the prohibited articles, and accordingly “cotton” was inserted as a West Indian production; the cotton then used in the United States being almost wholly brought from the West Indies.[313] A few months prior to Mr. Jay’s departure for England, Mr. Jefferson, the Secretary of State, in a report to Congress on the commerce of the United States, enumerated the exports of the country, but made no mention of cotton. It was not, in fact, then known as a production of the United States, although it now requires for its transport a greater amount of shipping than almost any other article in the whole range of commerce.
Indignation in France at the treaty.
The treaty so satisfactorily concluded between Great Britain and the United States, having been undoubtedly a successful effort of diplomacy in bringing together two nations which had been torn asunder by revolution, was viewed in France with the most profound alarm and indignation. The resentment of the French scarcely knew any bounds. They were full of the idea that the Americans owed their national independence to the aid rendered by them to the revolted colonies, a support which, as already explained, was furnished with a view less to promote the cause of freedom in the United States than to aim a blow at the maritime power of England.
The French protest against its principles.
So loud and clamorous were the complaints against the treaty, that if the voice of the French had been listened to, an open rupture must then have ensued. They publicly declared that it violated in a positive and hostile manner the treaty they had concluded “in favour of the Americans in the year 1778, by which the United States agreed to guarantee the possessions of France in the West Indies; whereas, by this treaty, the very furnishing of provisions to the French islands was pronounced illegal.”[314] They alleged that it “deprived France of all the advantages stipulated in a former treaty;” and they charged the Americans with “the abandonment of their neutral rights, to the injury of France,” in not maintaining the pretended principle of the modern law of nations, that free ships make free goods, and that timber and naval stores for the equipment and armament of vessels are not contraband of war.
Interest of England to have private property free from capture at sea.
On this question, of such paramount importance to England, considering the vast amount of her maritime commerce, much has been said and written, and every view of the subject has been argued with great care and consummate ability. No doubt the feeling of nations is becoming more in favour of the principle of making all goods not contraband of war exempt from capture at sea, and the views of the more modern English statesmen are inclining in that direction; but it is only by taking a retrospective view of the measures unscrupulously adopted by both France and England during their mighty struggle that a conjecture can be formed of what will be the future effect of such or similar compacts. While waging internecine war against each other, the people of England and France were famishing alike for want of food. Should such circumstances again arise, it is not easy to suppose, much less to hope, that nations so powerful at sea as Great Britain, with their people thus suffering, would be bound by any compact that stopped the supply from America or elsewhere; and it is almost as futile to hope that they would relinquish their power of hampering their enemies’ commerce at sea unless it were stipulated that neutral nations are bound to enforce the compact. Though England still stands first as a maritime power, and has consequently at her disposal the most extensive means of destroying an enemy’s maritime commerce, she has, on the other hand, by far the largest amount of property of any nation at all times afloat, and must therefore be the largest sufferer in the event of hostilities with any power which can equip a fleet of privateers. Consequently, it was hoped by a large portion of the English people, when the American government in 1856 declined to become parties to the declaration of the European Powers assembled in conference at Paris, unless all private property was made free from capture at sea, that Great Britain would have readily acquiesced in the proposal.
Condemnations of ships in the West Indies,
This policy did not, however, suit France in 1797; and to show in a practical manner their displeasure at the treaty into which the United States had entered with England, the French republic issued in the same year the circular, already incidentally noticed, in which they announced that the conduct of France towards neutrals would be regulated by the manner in which they should suffer the English to treat them, thus opening a wide door to spoliation, in defiance of subsisting treaty obligations. At Malaga and Cadiz the French consuls interpreted this unprincipled notification or decree as an authorization to capture and condemn all American merchantmen for the single circumstance of their being destined to a British port. But the most disastrous effect was produced in the West Indies, whose seas swarmed with privateers and gun-boats; which were stimulated into active operation by the latitude allowed to their depredations by the indefinite terms of that decree, and the explanatory orders of the agents of the French directory at Guadaloupe and St. Domingo. These agents captured and confiscated American vessels under the most shameless and contradictory pretexts. All neutral vessels bound to certain enumerated ports, which it was pretended in the decree had been given up to the English, were unceremoniously condemned. The fact of an American vessel being bound to an English port sufficed for her sweeping condemnation, and not unfrequently for that of her cargo. Any informality in a bill of lading; any irregularity in the certified list of the passengers and crew, the supercargo being, for instance, by birth a foreigner, although a naturalised citizen of the United States; the destruction of a paper of any kind soever, and the want of a sea letter, were deemed sufficient to warrant the condemnation of American property, even when the proofs of the property were indubitable.