This charge is as false as it is rude. I would beg this well-informed and polite citizen, to name one single instance of the insincerity of the Federal government, in enforcing this proclamation. As applied to the conduct of some part of the people, indeed, the neutrality might be called insidious; but then, this insidiousness operated in favour of the French and not against them. There were many who highly approved of the proclamation, and who at the same time actually made war upon the enemies of France. An army of Americans, under the authority of Genet, invaded the Spanish territories, while privateers were fitted out to cruise on the British: cargoes of ammunition and arms were shipped off, and thanksgivings, and other public demonstrations of joy, were heard from one end of the Union to the other. The bells of the good old Christian church, opposite me, fired rounds to celebrate the inundation of the atheistical barbarians into Holland; and the English flag was burnt at Philadelphia, on the public square, as a sacrifice to the goddess of French liberty. These latter circumstances are trifling in themselves, ’tis true, and certainly excited nothing but contempt and ridicule, in the minds of those whom they were intended to insult; but, the question is (and it is to ask this question that they are here mentioned), what would the French, that “terrible nation,” have said, had these insults, these marks of an insidious neutrality, been offered to them? Every opprobrious term in their new-fangled vocabulary would have been heaped on our heads. How many sacrés mâtins, and jean-f—tres, and f—tus chiens, and libertécides, and neutralitécides, would they have called the poor Anglo-Americans, in the course of a Decade!
Where a breach of neutrality, cognizable by the laws, appeared, the Federal government always did its utmost to bring the offenders to justice, and it is for this very reason, that the late diplomatic Mounseer has dared to accuse it of an insidious neutrality. After the proclamation was issued, and Genet saw that there was no hope of setting it aside by inciting the people to rebellion, he feigned an acquiescence, and declared that the Convention did not wish the prosperity of their dear brethren of America to be interrupted by a participation in the war. It entered into his delirious brain, that the proclamation was to be a mere cloak, under which he thought to enlist as many soldiers and arm as many privateers as he could pay for. Such a neutrality would, indeed, have been more advantageous to France than an open declaration of war on the part of the United States; but when he found that the Government was resolved to enforce the proclamation; when he found that his pirates were not permitted to rob and plunder with impunity, and that the American harbours were not to serve them as hiding places, whence they might sally out upon poor old John Bull, as their great predecessor did upon the bevees of Hercules; then he began to foam and sacré Dieu against the libertécide government, for “neutralizing the zeal of the citizens and punishing the generous children of liberty, for flying to the relief of their mother, when she was upon the point of violation by a horde of crowned monsters.”
The only breach of neutrality with which the Federal government can possibly be charged, is, the liquidation of the French debt. This favour, as beneficial to France as it was apparently hazardous to the United States, would have been acknowledged by citizen Adet and his masters, had they not been as ignorant of the law of nations as of the laws of politeness and decency. Citizen Genet, when he opened the negotiation, promised that every farthing of the debt, if liquidated, should be expended in the country, and, for once, I believe, contrary to the German proverb, the Frenchman kept his word; for, except what was retained for the unavoidable daily hire of Poor Richard, and some few other items, I believe every single sous of it went among the Flour Merchants. What think you, Mr. Dallas? Come now, d—n it, tell the truth for once in your life. Be frank with your countrymen, and we’ll make up all old grievances.—Well, you may be as sulky as you please; I believe it; or your friend Fauchet never would have stood, like a bilked cully, with his pocket turned inside out, when he could have purchased a delicious civil war with a few thousand dollars.
But, to return to my subject; whether this liquidation were a breach of neutrality, in a rigorous sense, or not, every real friend of America must rejoice at its being effected. It was one effort towards shaking off a dependence that yet hangs about our necks like a millstone. One of our poets has called a dun “a horrid monster, hated of gods and men.” Exactly such was Genet, when he first arrived, and such would have been his successors, had not the clamorous creditors (or rather claimants) been silenced by a discharge of the debt. This the Government undoubtedly foresaw, and therefore wisely resolved to relieve us from their importunities. But there is another debt of enormous magnitude, that still remains; I mean the debt of gratitude due from this country to the regenerated French. This we shall never liquidate, while there is a Frenchman left to ask, or an American to give. It is incalculable in its amount, and eternal in its duration; we will therefore leave it to pass down the stream of time along with the insidious neutrality.
“3. The Government, by its chicaneries, abandoned French privateers to its courts of justice.”
This is, I tremblingly presume, the “terrible” style, and is therefore looked upon as sufferable in a minister from a “terrible nation;” but I am pretty confident, it would be suffered with impunity in no other. Some writer on the belles lettres, I believe it is Burke, observes, that terror is a property of the sublime, and I am sure that insolence is a property of the terrible. I know not precisely what punishment the law of nations has awarded for such language, but I should imagine it can be nothing short of breaking of bones. A good Irish sheeleley or Devonshire quarter-staff seems much better calculated for answering a charge like this than a pen.—The chicaneries of the Government!—Abandoning privateers to courts of justice!—If this does not deserve a rib-roasting, I do not know what does. If this goes off so, then I say there is no such thing as justice on this side the grave.
Does the general Government of America then act by chicane? Does General Washington, whose integrity, whose inflexible firmness and whose undaunted bravery have been acknowledged and admired as far as his name has reached, merit to be put on a level with a miserable petti-fogger? And is a cause abandoned, because it is submitted to an American court of judicature? Are both judges and juries in this country so very, very corrupt, that no justice can be expected from their decisions? Are we so nearly like Sodom and Gomorrah that twelve honest men are not to be found among us?
An accusation may be so completely absurd and impudent, that no one can attempt to refute it, without sinking, in some degree, towards a level with the accuser; and as I have no inclination to do this, I leave the present one to be answered by the indignation of the reader.
“4. The Government eluded the amicable mediation of the French Republic for breaking the chains of the American citizens in Algiers.”
Every one who recollects the anxiety which the President has ever expressed on the subject of a treaty with Algiers, the innumerable obstacles he had to surmount, and the enormous expense by means of which it was at last effected, need not be told that this charge is as ill-founded as the preceding ones. But as it is intended to bring forward to the people a proof of the friendship of France, at the moment her hatred and hostility are evident to every eye, in this point of view it may be worth while to hear what the citizen has to say in support of it.
He tells us that—
“the French government, zealous of giving to the United States proofs of its attachment, had commenced negotiations with the regency of Algiers, in order to put an end to the war which that power was making on the commerce of the United States:”
That the Minister for Foreign Affairs instructed Fauchet (the very Fauchet who expressed his regret that the Western rebellion did not succeed) to communicate to the Federal government the steps which that of France had taken in this respect, which he did in the following terms, on the 4th of June 1794:—
“I have already had the pleasure, air, to inform you, verbally, of the interest which the committee of public safety of the National Convention had early taken in the truly unhappy situation of your commerce in the Mediterranean.
I now fulfil the duty imposed on me by the Government, by calling to your recollection in writing, the steps which are to be taken by our agent with the Dey of Algiers, for repressing this new manœuvre of the British administration, which has put the finishing stroke to its proofs of malevolence towards free people.