Essential Writings Volume 1. William 1763-1835 Cobbett

The latter presents to view his sole agency:” a piece of hypercriticism that shows what jealousies were at work within him; for really, if one examines it, Washington’s answer was a modest echo of the address. It says he had contributed a great share (by-the-by, Jefferson is guilty of worse than travestie, for the words of the address are “contributed a very great share”); that is, he had been a great contributor, whereas he only assumes to have been an agent in the work of bestowing benefits on his country. The general meaning of the word agency is, acting in behalf of another; so that Washington assumed a lower station than the address ascribed to him. In the same letter, which is dated 31st December 1795, he speaks of Randolph, and of his pamphlet, which he had just received from his correspondent, in these extraordinary terms: “I thank you much for the pamphlet. His narrative is so straight and plain, that even those who did not know him will acquit him of the charge of bribery. Those who knew him had done it from the first.” No man who reads the following pamphlet can think as Mr. Jefferson did of this offender, and indeed it is hardly to be believed that Randolph’s pamphlet could have imposed any such belief upon his mind. It is curious, too, to observe the discrepancy between the passage just quoted and that which we take from the Anas. In the latter, it is clear that Washington suspected Randolph, and that he sounded Jefferson to find if he did not. Jefferson says that he avoided the question; and on being pressed more home upon it, he goes “so little into society as to be unable to answer it;” and yet only about a twelvemonth afterwards, on receiving Randolph’s pamphlet, he vouches that “those who knew him had acquitted him from the first,” leaving his correspondent to suppose, that, if he did not know Randolph himself, he at any rate knew all those who did, and could rely upon their opinions.

      Among the means employed by the anarchical assemblies of France, in the propagation of their detestable principles, that of corruption may be regarded as one of the most powerful, and, accordingly, it has ever shared a principal part of their attention. If we take a survey of their confiscations, proscriptions and assassinations, from the seizure of the property of the ecclesiastics, by the constituent assembly, down to the horrid butcheries of Carrier, we shall find that this has often been a leading motive for the perpetrating of those deeds, which will blacken the French name as long as honesty and humanity shall be esteemed amongst men. It is, at least, an object of which they have never lost sight, and which they have spared nothing to accomplish. They have ransacked the coffers of the rich, stripped poverty of its very rags, robbed the infant of its birth-right, wrenched the crutch from the hand of tottering old age, and, joining sacrilege to burglary, have plundered even the altars of God, in order to possess themselves of the means of corrupting degenerate foreigners.

      That their plans of seduction have been but too successful they themselves avow. Like the gang of highwaymen in the subterraneous cave, each mounts the polluted tribune in his turn, and tells his tale of corruption. According to their own acknowledgments, they have expended millions upon millions in this commerce of consciences, since they have called their country a Republic; and, which is well worthy of remark, these immense sums have all been expended, with a trifling exception, in the Republican States that have condescended to fraternize with them. The patriots of Geneva and Holland, of Genoa and Switzerland, have been bought with the treasures extorted from the unhappy French. The two former states are, in every political point of view, annihilated, and the two latter exist as a proof, that states, as well as individuals may sometimes triumph in successful baseness and vanity. ^{Ref 045}

      The people of the United States of America had not the mortification to see their country included in the dark catalogue; and though it was evident to every discerning man, that some such influence began to prevail, in different parts of the Union, soon after the arrival of citizen Genet; though it was impossible to account for the foundation of the democratic clubs, and for the countenance they received from many persons of weight and authority (particularly in the State of Pennsylvania, where the Secretary of the State was at the head of the mother club) upon any other principle; though people were daily seen acting in direct opposition to their apparent interests; and though the partisans of France did not hesitate openly to declare their enmity to the President of the United States and to the Government he had been chosen to administer; notwithstanding all these striking and well-known facts, the great body of the people would have regarded any one as a slanderer of their national character, who should have insinuated, that the secrets of their Government, and their most important interests, were the price of that sudden exaltation that every where appeared among the persons devoted to the will of the French Minister. The people might have remained in this delusive confidence, till their constitution had been subverted, and till they had been plunged into a calamitous foreign war, or driven to the dire necessity of shedding each other’s blood, had it not been for the accidental interception of the letter, that has led to the vindication on which I have here undertaken to make a few observations.

      Before I enter on the vindication itself, two circumstances present themselves as subjects of preliminary observation: the time and the manner of its being introduced to the public.

      Mr. Randolph informs us that he gave in his resignation on the 19th of August, in consequence of his having been interrogated on the contents of an intercepted letter of the French minister, citizen Fauchet; and we all know that his Vindication, if vindication it must be, did not appear till the 18th of December, a space of exactly four months, wanting one day. When he had given in his resignation, he did not remain at Philadelphia to court the inquiry that he talks so much of, but flew away to Rhode-Island, in order to overtake Mr. Fauchet, by whose very letter he stood accused, and to obtain from him a certificate of his innocence and morality. We shall see by-and-by how he was employed during his stay at Rhode-Island; at present we must follow him back to Philadelphia, where we find him arrived on the 21st of September, thirty-three days after his departure, and writing to the President of the United States, to inform him that he is preparing his vindication with all imaginable dispatch; and of this he had taken care to inform the public several days before. After this notification, it was impossible that the people should not hourly expect to see in the public papers an elucidation of the whole affair. What then must be their astonishment, when after having waited with the utmost impatience for three long weeks, they were given to understand that the boasting vindicator could not close his laborious performance without having access to certain other papers of a confidential nature? The request for these papers, all evasive and malicious as it was, was at once granted by the President. Hence the idle tales of a British faction.

      It was probable, too, that by delaying the publication till after the meeting of Congress, it might be brought out at a moment when some decision of that body respecting the treaty might irritate the feelings of the people against the President’s conduct; and by directing their attention to that part of the vindication intended to criminate him, might turn the shaft of their censure from the vindicator himself.

      Nor shall we find that the manner of his introducing his vindication to the public speaks more in his favour.

      In this letter of resignation, he says to the President:—

      “I am satisfied, sir, that you will acknowledge one piece of justice on this occasion, which is, that until an inquiry can be made, the affair shall continue in secrecy under your injunction.”

      But after his return from Rhode-Island, knowing that the President could not lay an injunction for the time past, and knowing also that a copy of the dreadful dispatch was in the hands of Mr. Bond, ^{Ref 046} on whom the President could lay no injunction at all, he suspected the affair had got abroad, which was indeed the case; it was then, and not before, that, making a virtue of necessity, he informed the public, by publishing a letter he had written to the President, that he would prepare a vindication of his conduct.

      After this he suffered the matter to rest for some time, and then published an extract from another letter to the President, dated the 8th of October, in the following words:—

      “You must be sensible, sir, that I am inevitably driven into the discussion of many confidential and delicate points. I could with safety immediately appeal to the people of the United States, who can be of no party. But I shall wait for your answer to this letter, so far as it respects the paper desired, before I forward to you my general letter, which is delayed for no other cause. I shall also rely that you will consent to the whole