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to transmit the treaty to the committee of publick safety of the national convention. It has never doubted the attachment of the American government towards France, and I am convinced that the present circumstances will furnish a new proof of their good intentions.

Accept, sir, the assurance, &c.

P. A. ADET.

No. 27.

The Secretary of State to Mr. Adet, Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republick. Department of State, July 6,

1795.

SIR, I accept as a pledge of that harmony, which you are anxious to cultivate between our two nations, your letter of the 30th ult. received on the 1st. inst. at night. Let it be our unvaried practice to suffer no suspicion to ripen into an unfriendly sentiment, until it shall have been imparted to each other; and let us repel with firmness the artifice, by which ill affected persons, under the guise of attachment to the French Republick, endeavour to embroil it with the United States.

When you expressed to me on Monday last some uneasiness, which the report of the contents of the proposed treaty with Great Britain had excited in your breast, I the more readily informed you of my intention to ask the President's permission to furnish you with a copy, as I was convinced, that an entire view of it would not only enable you to state all the parts objectionable to our ally, but would also remove the prejudices which detached representations might occasion. Having delivered to you a copy, I am now to examine the provisions which seem to you irreconcileable with our engagements to France.

Upon this head, it has been often declared by the President of the United States, and is now repeated, that those engagements shall not, with his assent, be infringed. As far, therefore, as he is concerned, you need only prove, at any time, that a given measure will infringe it; and he will not countenance that measure. The same, I am persuaded, may be affirmed of the other branches of our government. But after a close scrutiny of the points which alone you have selected for animadversion, it is not

discerned that the rights of France are in any degree impaired.

In saying this, I must call to your recollection the manner in which the making of treaties is arranged by our constitution. The senate advise and consent to their being made; the President ratifies them; and the courts are afterwards at liberty to construe them, as particular cases arise, requiring their decision. The opinions therefore of the President are not obligatory on the courts. He judges for himself; they judge for themselves; and if in the interpretation of the one or the other, the rights of the French Republick are assailed, the accustomed modes of remonstrance and negotiation will still be open; and the principles, upon which national redress is demanded, will still have their force.

After this explanation, I proceed to state to you the result of the President's reflections on your exceptions to the proposed treaty.

These exceptions are, 1st, that the 23d and 24th articles of our commercial treaty with France are violated by the 17th and 18th of the proposed treaty-2dly, that the 17th article of the former is destroyed by the 23d, 24th and 25th articles of the latter-and 3dly, that the last sentence in the first paragraph of the 25th article of the proposed treaty "appears to prevent a new negotiation between the United States and France."

First, The essence of your first objection, as drawn from the reasoning in your letter, is reducible to this statement By the treaty with France, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, ropes, cables, sails, sail-cloths, anchors and parts of anchors, masts, planks, boards, and beams of what trees soever, and all other things proper for building or repairing ships, shall not be reputed contraband of war; but shall be reckoned among free goods, and may be transported in the freest manner by the contracting parties, even to places belonging to an enemy; such only excepted as are actually besieged, blocked up, or invested. But the proposed treaty designates as contraband, timber for ship building, tar or rosin, copper in sheets, sails, hemp and cordage, and whatever may serve directly to the equipment of vessels (unwrought iron and fir planks only excepted) and they are declared to be just objects of confiscation whenever they shall be attempted to be carried

to an enemy. From hence you conclude, that the United States may freely carry into England all things proper for the building or repairing of vessels, without fearing any obstacle on the part of France; while they can carry none of them to France; and that they have thus granted to England a right which France enjoys not, and which in the course of the existing war inclines the balance in favour of England.

The United States have certainly opposed the exten sion of contraband, whenever the British government has sought to swell the catalogue. But it never could be denied, under the law of nations, and independently of a treaty, that materials for the building and repairing of vessels are contraband. The proposed treaty then does not grant, but recognises only a right to Great Britain, which even without that recognition she would have possessed and exercised.

This recognition might have been omitted or inserted, without changing the nature of the subject; though it was more natural, in commercial arrangements, to particularize the articles of contraband.

It was indeed anxiously desired, to diminish the list, as much as possible. But if no reciprocity could accomplish this end; if no equivalent could be offered by us to Great Britain, powerful enough to induce her to renounce her rights under the law of nations, what was to be done? Many reasons will occur, sir, why it was not to be extorted by force: to become a party in the war, was neither our policy nor the wish of your Republick: to become a party in the war for a cause which the armed neutrality itself never would have asserted, would have been supported by no civilized nation.

The United States have therefore wilfully surrendered no right, relative to contraband.

Nor is the treaty with France contravened by this acknowledgment of contraband. It stipulates that if France be at war, and the vessels of the United States carry naval stores to her enemy, French cruisers shall not capture them. The proposed treaty admits the right of Great Britain to seize such vessels going to her enemy. The inference is, that France has relaxed her strict rights, in consideration that the United States have relaxed theirs in this respect; but that Great Britain will not relax hers.

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The treaty with France therefore remains uninfluenced by the proposed compact with Great Britain.

The true light in which the subject is to be viewed, is that which you have caught; when you allude to the ef fect which the right of Great Britain to seize naval stores, going from the United States to France, may have upon her interest, while she continues bound not to seize like stores, going from the United States to England.

Our treaty with France was entered into with a perfect knowledge on both sides that they were striking out from the class of contraband, articles which the law of nations denominated such. They were both apprized, that if the United States should be at war with Great Britain, the shipping of France, carrying naval stores to Great Britain, could not be seized by American cruisers; while the same shipping bringing naval stores to the United States might be seized by British cruisers. They saw therefore the reciprocity of the prohibition. Why then was not the case which has now happened, being foreseen, guarded against? Perhaps on account of this very reciprocity. Perhaps from a belief that it was not overimportant. Perhaps, on the part of the United States, from a confidence that their internal supplies would be ample; and on that of France, that their home resources, their own shipping and convoys, would accommodate them with those stores. Or more probably neither of the contracting powers was disposed to cramp the commerce of the other, but upon the most demonstrable necessity: howsoever this may be, the proposed treaty does not vary the situation of France, nor better the rights of Great Britain in one iota of contraband.

There was a time indeed, when France felt herself absolved from the stipulation, that free ships make free goods, because Great Britain by capturing hostile property in American bottoms, rendered disadvantageous to France to spare British property in those bottoms. But the law of the 13th Nivose, in the 3d year, to which you refer, has banished that mode of reasoning, and has creat ed a precedent for our mode.

Hitherto, however, I have spoken upon principles of right. Upon any other principles, and more especially upon those of hardship and injury to a friend, it shall be a topick of the negotiation now opening between us. With

the temper which will pervade the whole of it, I cannot doubt that some modification may be devised; and it may be separated from the general treaty, so as not to be delayed by it.

Second, In my judgment you misconceive the proposed treaty, when you imagine, that the English will have a right to claim the execution of the 23d and 24th articles of it, in derogation of the 17th article of our treaty with France; that is to say, that in the course of the present war they may conduct their prizes, made from the French, into the ports of the United States. They will not possess such a privilege during the present or any other war with France. For "nothing in the proposed treaty contained, shall be construed or operate, contrary to former and existing publick treaties with other sovereigns or states." The British plenipotentiary was here admonished of our prior engagements, and of our determination to postpone to them any new contract with Great Britain. Our treaties with France are saved by the general description, which was the most eligible form of expression; because it was shorter, and equally well adapted to comprehend all our treaties. It is the same form of expression with that which was adopted in the year 1786, in the treaty between France and Great Britain.

The 40th article of the last mentioned treaty, and the 25th of the proposed treaty are in substance alike; and yet it was clearly and properly understood, when the French and English treaty was made, that our commercial treaty with France was not in this respect shaken. We have at least never complained of any infraction of ours from this cause, and therefore are sincere in believing, that France can be as little affected by our treaty with Great Britain, as the United States were by hers with Great Britain.

In your quotation of the 23d article of the treaty with Great Britain, you observe, that the vessels of the English are to be received with hospitality in the ports of the United States. They are the "ships of war," the publick navy, not the privateers, which are to be so received. Now the British ships of war are not prohibited by our treaty with France from visiting our ports, unless under certain exceptionable circumstances. From these they are not released by the proposed treaty; because our

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