interests are compromitted. It was when a terrible war was incessantly devouring her, that she rigorously fulfilled her treaties with you; in this instance she demands but justice, and cannot obtain it. On the contrary, she sees her enemies admitted to an intimacy with you, at the moment in which your commerce and your sovereignty are alike insulted by them; at the moment when adding derision to injustice, they despoil you anew upon the seas; when they promise to indemnify you for former acts. This reflection, sir, becomes much more grievous, when we see posted up under your eyes, the official legalization of a proclamation, which prohibits your commerce with our colonies, and suspends to you alone the law of nations. I know, sir, what respect imposes on me as to what immediately interests your affairs and your relations as a people. But I cannot entirely pass in silence transactions to which the Republick is no stranger, because they are directed against her; and that to subscribe by an excess of courtesy to such orders, were to quit the neutral position which the Americans profess. Examine, I pray you, sir, whether this neutrality can be said to exist, when, on the one hand you can no longer maintain your treaties, and on the other you are obliged to abandon your relations exclusively to the discretion of England, who doubtless will soon declare all the universe blockaded, except her possessions. What account do you conceive I can render to the French government, of the means you take for rendering your neutrality respectable? Yet on that my instructions insist, and it is on that more especially that France is uneasy. I shall not remind you of the conversations which I have had the honour of having with you on this subject; still less should I call to your recollection the verbal promises which you have repeatedly made, especially at a certain period, of a more honourable state of things. You know what on the faith of the government we are to expect from a negotiation which creates much noise. All America now knows the result of this measure. The same acts which produced it, still exist since it has taken a form which at first was not announced, but from which, moreover, more had been expected. I hasten, sir, to quit a subject which I begun but with pain, and with respect to which I know my obligations. I return to what occupies me more immediately. I hope therefore, sir, that the Executive of the United States will not be satisfied under its treaty concluded with England, since every thing proves that that mean is insufficient. I likewise hope that your ports will henceforward be shut against vessels which enter them in contravention of the treaties uniting our two nations. I also hope, that the President, who has so often promised me through you that he would support the treaties at all events, will give orders that his intentions, upon which I have not the shadow of a doubt, be finally fulfilled; in a word, I hope that my claims, so often and so many times repeated, will be attended to, so much the more as they are just, and as for several months I have not ceased to present them to the cold impartiality of your government. Accept, sir, &c. No. 65. TRANSLATION. JH. FAUCHET. Joseph Fauchet, Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republick near the United States, to Mr. Randolph, Secretary of State of the United States. Philadelphia, 4th Prairial, 3d year of the French Republick, one and indivisible (May 23, 1795, O. S.) SIR,-It is now twenty-one days since I had the honour of writing to you, and eight since you promised an answer to my letter. It gives me pain to be obliged to remind you of this promise. An event announced in the gazettes proves how much the complaints I have made required an immediate attention. If against the tenour of the treaties which I have hitherto invoked in vain, an English fleet employed upwards of ten months at the entrance of your ports, intercepting French property, real or supposed, and even frequently conducting prizes into your bays, had not received a constant asylum in the United States, with the liberty of supplying themselves with provisons and of repairing their vessels, they could not have again taken French vessels in the Chesapeake. I experience unpleasant sensations, sir, when I observe that such accidents are repeated on your coasts only as the sequel to the violation of our treaties, notwithstanding my reiterated representations; and notwithstanding the religious punctuality with which the French Republick keeps her engagements with a nation to whom she has not ceased to testify her attachment. Accept, sir, my esteem, JH. FAUCHET. No. 66. Mr. Randolph, Secretary of State, to Mr. Fauchet, Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republick. Department of State, May 29, 1795. SIR,-As soon as I had submitted to the President of the United States, your letter of the 2d instant with which I was honoured on the 4th, he instructed me to search the files of my office, in order that he might do, on this occasion, what he has done on every other of a similar nature. This has been to weigh the complaints of foreign ministers, with temper and impartiality; to explain misconceptions with frankness, to rectify real errours; to compensate where compensation was due, but to stand firm to the imperious dictates of national honour. I have obeyed his command, with an anxiety to convince the French Republick, that we have kept pace with our obligations, but with a resolution to rest my reply upon facts, simple and unrestrained, and upon reasoning, seeking no lustre from a fervency of style. This, sir, is the result. First, The order of 1793, prohibiting" The original arming and equipping of vessels in the ports of the United States by any of the belligerent parties, for military ser vice, offensive or defensive," was transmitted to you, as a part of the suite of papers, intended by the governour of Virginia for your information of his conduct. Nothing was more remote from my imagination, than that this order could awaken the discontent which generated the early discussions with your predecessor. It was announced to Mr. Genet in May of that year; and its principle has never been since assailed as far as I recollect, under the authority of your government, except from his pen; notwithstanding Mr. Jefferson's letter to our minister in Paris on the 16th of August, 1793, which was communicated to the French executive, assigns to this subject a prominent rank for consideration. Permit me therefore, to refer you to a letter from this department to Mr. Genet on the 5th of June, 1793; wherein you will find the decided sense of the President to be, that "The arming and equipping of vessels in the ports of the United States to cruise against nations, with whom they are at peace is incompatible with the territorial sovereignty of the United States; that it makes them instrumental to the annoyance of those nations; and thereby tends to compromit their peace." Permit me also to refer you to an act of Congress on the 5th of June, 1794, rendering it penal within the waters of the United States to fit out and arm, or procure to be fitted out and armed, or knowingly to be concerned in the furnishing, fitting out, or arming of any ship or vessel, with intent that such ship or vessel shall be employed in the service of any foreign prince or state, to cruise or commit hostilities upon the subjects, citizens or properties of another foreign prince or state, with whom the United States are at peace. Both of those letters express the grounds of this provision. To open afresh the disagreeable scenes of that day, is a task which we did not expect; after the disapprobation manifested by your Republick, towards the chief actor; and more especially after the forbearance of the President, who, having no personal impulse to indulge, discovered, as is known, sir, to you, no desire to embrace the opportunity, presented by your first official application. But without for a moment admitting, as you seem to apprehend, that the order ought to become exceptionable to one nation, because by its operation "right" is done to another; we still hold it to be reconcileable with unsullied faith and essential to an honest neutrality. If French armaments in our ports have principally experienced the penalties of the order; if the execution of it has been prompt; it is because in the one instance, an expeditious remedy was practicable; and in the other scarcely any but French cruisers were attempted to be there equipped; although examples are not wanting of British cruisers being in like manner disarmed. Every contrast, therefore, is unfounded, between our presumed rapidity of motion against France, and a reluctant tardiness towards other powers. Second, But, sir, you have drawn a conclusion, inadmissible by us, under any aspect. You have ventured to intimate a predilection in our government for Great Britain; and to fortify the insinuation by these suggestions: 1. that "ever since you have been here, a single allegation on the part of the English agents founded or not, has been sufficient to cause to be arrested, the prizes made by your privateers, although our treaties should shelter them from every pursuit :" 2. that "far from using the same means. of coercion towards the English, when they send into our ports the prizes made from the French; the rigour, which our treaties demand, has not been exercised:" 3d. that "the militia have as yet been assembled only to support the arrest of French vessels, or of their prizes:" 4th. that "under our very eyes is fixed the official legalization of a proclamation, which interdicts to us a commerce with your colonies, and suspends as to us alone the law of nations:" 5th. and "that the United States quit the neutrality which they profess by subscribing through an excess of circumspection (menagement) to a mandate like this; and by being unable, on the one side to maintain their treaties, and by being obliged, on the other, to abandon their relations, exclusively to the discretion of England." You, lastly, allude to our treaty with Great Britain, as if it rivetted the suspicions, so profusely strewed in every page of your letter. First, If the names of the French prizes, which have been arrested by virtue of instructions from our govern ment; the time and place of the arrest, and the issue of the examination, were now within my reach; each of them should be brought to the test. But, not being individually remembered, they shall be classed under three heads: 1st, Those made by illegal privateers: 2d, Those made by lawful cruisers, but within the protecting line of our coast; and 3d, Those, made by lawful cruisers on the high seas. First, The seizure of prizes made by illegal privateers, was the effect of necessity; having been postponed, until the injunctions against those corsairs had been often and flagrantly contemned. No precaution was spared to prevent an unjust detention. The Executive of the United States; the governours; or some officer acting under the one or the other, passed their judgment upon the probability and adequacy of the cause of arrest, in the first stage of the business, and the final decision was always dispassionate, and deliberate: what better security, situated as our country is. could have been devised, to avoid |