intervention of the Executive upon the simple question, is there ground for prosecution or not? and this method in cases where there was absolutely ground for intervention on the part of the United States, would have been at once more natural and more conformable to the treaty, which by name interdicts the admiralty courts the right of taking cognizance, &c. You say that it is impossible that your courts should not grant protection to your injured fellow citizens who claim it, unless, you add, it is wished that the lives and property of our citizens should become the sport and prey of the first sea rover. There is no doubt on this head. But if any fortuitous events of this nature have taken place, I should be the first to take notice of them. I do not defend pirates, and I see with regret that all the armed vessels of my nation which bring prizes into the United States suffer under such a bitter and I also add such an ill founded reflection. If sea rovers exist who systematically attack the property of your fellow citizens, it is not certainly among the French mariners. I doubt whether you can reproach us of another case similar to that in which the Concorde's tender seized in Boston Bay an English advice boat bound to Halifax. You will doubtless recollect that my dissatisfaction was not evinced in an equivocal manner; and I believe that in many stronger cases than that, the United States have been far from obtaining from any other quarter so decisive and so sincere an act of justice. On touching upon the article of recrimination which I conceive it my duty to make to some parts of your letter, I in two words return to its commencement. You remind me of scenes long passed, the energetick measures they gave rise to, and the patience and generosity of the government under those circumstances. I cannot believe that you wish to establish similitudes between the present and the past. Were I for a moment to admit it, I should remind you of the proclamation which I published on my arrival ; and I should then content myself with requesting you to cite the cases, in which I have authorized, in which 1 have permitted contraventions of the laws of the United States, and of the regulations of the President, in the first instance, and afterwards of my engagements.

Were the history of the prizes brought into the United States by our privateers since the present hostilities, brought into view, you would see the various cases in

which sometimes the governours, sometimes the courts of justice, sometimes both, have taken cognizance. You would doubtless be puzzled amidst all these to find the part of the 17th article of our treaty, which specifies that we may bring our prizes into the ports of the United States, without the officers of the admiralty taking cognizance of them.

Besides, sir, you have not observed that my complaints have been very importunate on that part of the treaty. If you give yourself the trouble to examine the time at which my correspondence began to be more pressing and more animated, you will see that it was not on the affair of the prizes, which I troubled you most. But I allow that I have become more pressing since it appeared to me, that the English vessels were admitted into your ports in contravention of our treaties, and in contempt of all neutrality, after having made French prizes and pillaged your vessels under the single pretext of trading with France.

The 17th article of our treaty, in my opinion leaves no doubt that all asylum should be refused, (except in cases of distress or of tempest) to the English vessels who shall have made prize of French vessels or of French property. Under this persuasion it was, that I early complained against the admission of every English vessel of that de-. nomination, it was this persuasion which induced me to write my letter of the 18th September, in answer to yours of the 7th of the same month, in which I found a construction of the treaty which to me appeared new. I admit however, that you had notified to me in your letter of 20th August, preceding the regulations of the President of the United States, establishing it, but I was so far from suspecting this article, that I did not in reading it observe it. These regulations are not among the papers of the office of legation, which leads me to believe that they never were notified to it, before the 20th August last. If no complaint has ever been made on the subject, the reason most undoubtedly is, that the English had not then a maritime force upon the coast, and that they had not dreamed (as we never thought ourselves that they had the right) of making use of your ports as a station, after having committed the acts for which the treaty pronounces against them a positive exclusion. Therefore, sir, the

silence of the envoys of France with the United States, cannot be argued on this subject.

On analyzing all my complaints upon this part of the treaty, they are reduced to the entry of English vessels which had captured French vessels or French property; to the admission of these vessels with their prizes, or to the admission of their prizes alone. There never has been any hesitation on the last point. Upon the rest the greatest part of what I have written, is built, I avow ac cording to your construction, upon a false basis. But even admitting that construction, the Terpsichore should not have been admitted at Norfolk with the privateer la Montagne which she had captured: and the English ship Argonaut should not have entered with the corvette l'Esperance, nor have equipped the latter in your waters; on the first point you remind me of all the federal Executive has done, and of my own letters in which I have expressed my satisfaction. But, sir, if I could not but be satisfied at that time with the performance of the promises of the government, reflect I pray you whether I have equally had reason to be so with what has passed at Norfolk, and at a distance from it; and my complaints in general have been grounded upon what happened far from its immediate inspection. A short statement of the facts which appear not to be entirely known to you, will enable you to judge whether my suspicions on the slackness of the local governours or those under them, are groundless.

The French consul at Norfolk on the 31st August, wrote to request the expulsion of the frigate Terpsichore and of her prize the privateer la Montagne. Governour Lee after a lapse of twelve days answered him. He answered on the 12th of September, that he was going to make inquiry. It appears that the inquiry was not made, for on the 25th September, two other English frigates entered Hampton road with two prizes made upon us, and the same day the vice consul sent a new complaint to the executive of Virginia. The inquiries of governour Lee could not have been very extensive, nor have been made in much haste, for it would seem that if on replying on the 12th September, to the vice consul, he had written to the officers whom it concerned, and given them orders, we should not at this moment see the evil renewed thirteen days after that reply. The vice consul received from the

lieutenant governour an answer dated the 9th of October. In this answer the lieutenant governour pretends not to have read the second letter from the consul of the 25th September, and does not reply to it: he speaks of the affair of the Terpsichore, of which the vice consul did not mention a word in that second letter, she having sailed at that time, as you justly observe, that is to say, twenty-five days after her entering into your ports with a French prize.

You here ask me, sir, where I find reasons to support a predilection for England. I shall answer you with the same freedom you interrogate me. I observe that our consuls are amused by specious correspondences merely to cover inactivity-that our enemies are permitted to do what they please from the want of precise instructions to the commandants of ports, which should authorize them to act immediately on such contraventions of the treaty taking place. Certainly, sir, it is not requiring that the correspondence should travel with extraordinary swiftness, to complain that at one hundred miles distance from the seat of the government of Virginia two successive infractions of the treaty were committed in the course of one month. But how is it wished that things should be rigorously executed when on the 9th October, that is to say, thirty-nine days after the first complaint of the consul, the lieutenant governour wrote to the militia officers without mentioning the second infraction, communicated to him relative to the Terpsichore alone, and gave them what instruction? Not that of causing this frigate to depart if she was still in the river, but to make inquiry into the situation of the Terpsichore and of every other vessel in like circumstances and inform of the result. Certainly, sir, it appears that the correspondence travelled with much greater swiftness, formerly, if we may judge from the letter of the governour of 22d August, 1793, addressed to the customhouse and militia officers, which was among the enclosures of your letter of 24th February. He says, in speaking of the prizes suspected of having been made by vessels armed and equipped in the ports of the United States, which can scarcely be applied but to French vessels-" If those prizes come into the ports of your district, you will immediately have them seized by your militia." On the 5th of December following, he gave additional orders for having

seized in like manner the prizes alleged to have been made within the jurisdictional line of the waters of the United States, and then to inform him of such seizure. Those orders are still pursued, and as there are few prizes, as I have already said, which will not be alleged to have been made in the waters of the United States, or by vessels which have augmented their armaments in them, we still see prizes arrested in the first place, and examined afterwards. Why did not Mr. Lee authorize the commandant at Norfolk to cause previously to depart every vessel arriving with a prize? It was on again finding those ancient orders presented by him as a proof of his activity in doing justice to my complaints, that I could not avoid saying I had no need of them to convince me, that the most prompt severity has never been omitted to be employed towards us. If I were disposed to cite new examples, I could mention the affair of the Favourite, on board of which vessel armed men were sent to search in the port of New York, without saying a word to the consul residing. there, and without observing the most common respect due to a publick vessel by the law of nations, and stipulated for ours by treaty. I might cite the vigour with which a vessel, going to Guadaloupe and suspected indeed of an infraction of the rules of your neutrality, had been arrested at Norfolk. I leave it to impartial men to compare this energetick conduct with the orders lately given against the English vessels which refused to respect your neutrality, and the alteration of those publick orders almost immediately after they were issued.

As to the affair of the corvette l'Esperance it was vain to support the conduct, in that respect, with what the consul of the Republick said on the subject. The Argonaut which took her, should not have been permitted to enter more readily than herself; and she having been partially equipped in your waters should have been proscribed. 1 shall not take the trouble to examine the deposition of Butler the pilot and his retraction. To judge of the merit of the whole of this little action, I do not know the interval which passed between the pro and the con, and in which officious persons may have informed Butler that he had been imposed on or mistaken.

After having reviewed the different particular cases upon which I have complained, permit me to give an