He then tells us the old story about the flour-merchants.
Now comes Mr. Randolph’s turn:—
“Our discourse,” says he, “turned upon the insurrection and upon the expected machinations of Mr. Hammond and others at New-York, against the French Republic, Governor Clinton, and myself.—Fresh as the intelligence was upon my mind, that the British were fomenting the insurrection, I was strongly inclined to believe that Mr. Hammond’s Congress would not forego the opportunity of furnishing, to the utmost of their abilities, employment to the United States, and of detaching their attention and power from the European war. I own, therefore, that I was extremely desirous of learning what was passing at New-York. I certainly thought that those men, who were on an intimate footing with Mr. Fauchet, and had some access to British connections, were the best fitted for obtaining this intelligence.”
And for this reason he recommended the flour-men. Oh, master Randolph! master Randolph, Oh!
Here, then, this worthy statesman was endeavouring to render a most important service to his country, His only object being to dive into the machinations that the English Minister and his Congress were hatching against the United States! A very laudable pursuit. This story has something in it so flattering to human nature, that it is a pity it should be the most abominable falsehood that ever issued from the procreant brain of a pettyfogging politician.
In the first place, nobody sincerely believed, that the English had even the slightest correspondence or connection with the insurgents; nor did any body ever, from first to last, pretend to avow such a belief, that I know of, except Mr. Randolph and a certain Governor. These two gentlemen endeavoured to impress the idea of such a connection as well on the mind of the President as on that of the public; but neither of these yielded to the insidious suggestion. Both very naturally demanded proofs, and proofs were not to be found; unless the insurgents’ howling out liberty and equality, their planting liberty trees, and their wearing cockades à la tricolore, were proofs of their attachment to the English. No one circumstance that has yet come to light is a stronger proof of a deep-laid plot against the Federal government than the efforts of these men to give a false direction to the public mind. While they were making overtures to the French Minister, while they were endeavouring to feed the insurrection from that source, they threw out, in order to disguise their views, insinuations that another nation was at the bottom of it.
And what was this pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond at New-York, that it should so alarm our Vindicator, and make his friend Fauchet fear, that something would be attempted by it to the prejudice of Mr. Randolph and the “virtuous” father-in-law Ref 057 of citizen Genet? Who composed this Congress? Why, Mr. Hammond was the President, and his wife, a sick child, and a nurse, were the members! A pretty Congress this to form machinations against the Government of the country, and to stir up a rebellion in a quarter four or five hundred miles distant! This Congress, too, was assembled at New-York, or rather on Long-Island, where I do not believe that citizen Fauchet had three or four, nor even one, flour-contractors; and, if so, how came the wise Mr. Randolph to imagine that the contractors would have made a journey from Virginia, where the greatest part of them were, or even from this city, to New-York, in order to dive into Mrs. Hammond’s and her maid’s secrets? The fellows must necessarily have remained some time there to effect the object of their mission; they must have gone skulking about incognito like other spies, and must of course have run the risk of kickings and rib-roastings in abundance; and all this for what? why truly, for nothing! for it would have been nothing, if they were to receive no more than what was “due them on their contracts,” and both our certificate-makers declare that they were not to have another farthing.
If the overtures had been for money to be employed in the procuring of intelligence of what the English Minister was about, is it not natural to suppose, that citizen Fauchet would have mentioned this circumstance in his very confidential letter? Yet we see that he has not let fall a word about it, either in his letter or in his dispatch, No. 6. Again, what would his reflections on such overtures have been? He would probably have exclaimed: Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have dived into all the machinations of the English! Instead of: “Thus with some thousands of dollars, the Republic could have decided on civil war or on peace! Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their prices!”—And, let me repeat, what could induce him to talk, in his dispatch No. 6, of throwing himself on the pure principles of his Republic, if nothing was in contemplation but the unravelling of the treacherous designs of the English?
But I do not rest upon this negative evidence to disprove all that the certificate-makers have attempted to impose on us, on this subject. Citizen Fauchet has let fall a sentence in his intercepted letter that proves, that he did not look upon the money overtures as being made with an intention of coming at the secrets of the English; that he never thought the English at all concerned in fomenting the insurrection; that he was well persuaded that the insurgents never looked for support from them; and that he was fully convinced of the meanness and baseness of all those who attempted to propagate such an opinion. “But,” says he in the 15th paragraph of the letter, “but, in order to obtain something on the public opinion, it was necessary to magnify the danger, to disfigure the views of those people (insurgents), to attribute to them the design of uniting themselves with England.—This step succeeded, an army is raised, &c. &c.” Here, then, he unequivocally gives the lie to every word that he has said on the subject in his certificate, and to every word that Mr. Randolph has been awkward enough to repeat after him. If he was so well informed that all these malicious tales about the interference of the English were invented and propagated merely in order to obtain something on the public opinion by magnifying the danger and disfiguring the views of the insurgents, all which, it is clear, he learnt from the precious confessions of Mr. Randolph; if he was so thoroughly convinced of all this, at the time of writing his letter, in October 1794, how comes he to recollect, in the month of August 1795, that both he and Mr. Randolph did “really suspect, that the English were fomenting the insurrection?” No; they never suspected any such thing; and they, and all others who pretended to suspect it, have only discovered to what pitiful tricks, what political quackery, they were reduced.
One closing observation on this subject. If money had been wanted to obtain intelligence concerning the pretended Congress of Mr. Hammond; if this object was so near Mr. Randolph’s heart as he hypocritically declares it was, whom ought he to have applied to? Whom would he naturally have applied to for the necessary sums? Whom but the President of the United States, under whose authority alone he could have acted in so delicate a conjuncture? He would have laid before him his suspicions of the dreadful Congress, and proposed to him the means the most likely of unveiling its machinations; and, if money had been necessary, it would, of course, have been granted. But, instead of this, away he runs to a foreign minister, and unbosoms himself to him, as if the secret was of too much importance to be deposited in the breast of the President, or as if the French had more interest in quelling the insurrection than the United States had. He appears to have looked upon citizen Joseph Fauchet as his father confessor; and for that reason it was, I suppose, he reserved for his ear, like a pious and faithful penitent, those precious secrets that he had kept hidden from all the world besides. In the council chamber at Philadelphia he was troubled with a locked jaw; but the instant he entered the confessional on the banks of the Schuylkill, to which the citizen seems to have retired on purpose, the complaint was removed, and he said more in “twenty minutes” than he will be able to unsay in twenty years.
To the side of a stream, in a deep lonely dell,
Father Joseph retir’d, as a hermit to dwell,
His hermitage, crown’d with a cap tricolour,
Brought a beggarly pilgrim his aid to implore.
First the holy man promis’d, and, for his professions,
The penitent made him most precious confessions.
Now tell me, dear son, said the hermit, your needs:—
Give me, good Father Joseph, a string of