that power. You, as well as Mr. Gallatin, have manifested to me a desire also to make a new convention with France, to take the place of that which expires on the 30th of September next.

"I will for a moment call to your consideration this double object which the federal government proposes to itself, and the difficulties of accomplishing it in a manuer advantageous for all the contracting parties. My just deference for your government, sir, does not permit me to make any observation on the haste with which the executive has received the first overtures of the English ministry, yet composed of the same men who very lately discovered a very manifest aversion to every species of conciliation, and who joined to a denial of justice to the Americans, every asperity of forms, of tone, and of style, towards the agents of your government.

"If I have supposed that this very haste was necessary to satisfy the wishes of the people, of whom foresight is not the first virtue, others may see in that political proceeding a precipitation perhaps dangerous; and if it does not lessen the dignity of the executive, may, at least, produce consequences prejudicial to the true interests of the union. It is on these very interests, much more than on those of France, as its enlarged and liberal policy, its principles of universal justice, and the elements of which its power is composed, have placed it beyond all attacks ; it is only on the interest of your country that I fix my attention and invoke your's under a circumstance so delicate.

"My correspondence with your predecessor is enough to convince you, sir, that I have not left him ignorant of the dangers of the crisis of Europe, and its inevitable effects on the destiny of the states of the American union. Positive and multiplied information on the events of the other continent, and their probable results, has enabled me sometimes to reach a power who had proclaimed its contempt for the rights of nations; and, without doubt, the Americans were

the people the most interested in the success of that political act. There are, however, American merchants who, by all the means of the most shameful deception, have endeavoured to elude the measures of France and to second the efforts of the common enemy to escape them, and have, at length, by their multiplied and proven frauds, provoked the more severe dispositions of the decree of Milan. Thus not only were the measures of France justified as measures of retaliation, but they were indispensable to free the American commerce from the yoke which Great Britain had placed on it; to cause to be respected in future the flag of neutrals, and to force that power to acknowledge the common right of nations and the dominion of the seas; and the confiscation, the sale, and the burning of some American merchant vessels having false papers and navigating in contempt of the prohibitions of their own government to favor the enemies of France, have been legal measures conformable to the rights of war, and which the force of circumstances and the interest of all imperiously required. But I appeal to you, sir, the council of Washington, of which you were then also a member, has it given all the necessary attention to the representations made on this subject by M. Champagny to Mr. Armstrong, as well as to those which I considered it my duty to address to the Secretary of State? Has it been possible to make known through the United States all the advantages which the American people ought to find in the accomplishment of the designs of France; to discuss its projects in the calm of impartiality; to cause the voice of reason and of principles to be heard when the declamations of error or of bad faith, when the influence of prepossessions and the clamors of par. ty spirit preserved their empire over the public opinion, or rather received a new force from the incertitude or the silence of the [former] ancient executive council? That disposition, almost general, to attribute wrongs to France by way of weakening the outrages

of England-was it foreign to the administration of which I speak? And that administration, has it always been willing to hear me while I made it perceive the consequences of the conduct of the federal government in regard to the French government? Was this administration well convinced that all governments are not disposed to forget or to suffer injuries with impunity?

"In recalling to your recollection, sir, the wrongs of the federal government towards France, I only mention notorious acts which my former correspondence has established, observing to you, at the same time, that I understand according to their class [je comprends dans leur cathagorie] the particular offences of your citizens; for every government is bound, [est solidaire] in regard to other powers, for the acts of its subjects, otherwise it would not be a government, and could not offer either security or guarantee for the execution of its agreements.

"Complaints were for a long time made to the United States of the delays which some American citizens had experienced in receiving the indemnities which were due to them, and of which the reimbursement was made from a part of the funds destined for the acquisition of Louisiana; but the affair of the heirs of Beaumarchais, who have in vain claimed for 28 years a debt made sacred by his motives, proven to the last degree of evidence, and on which the declared interest of the French government does not admit of a put-off; is it finished?

"Captain Mouessat, the bearer of a letter of marque and commandant of an armed schooner, followed an English convoy, and was on the point of taking seve ral merchant vessels, when two American armed brigs, and armed to protect the infamous commerce with St. Domingo, attacked him under the English flag, and not only added treachery to superiority of force to get possession of the vessel of Mouessat, but after having pillaged it, massacred a part of the crew an hour

after they had struck; and this crime, which remains unpunished, is so much the less forgotten as captain Mouessat never let go [quitte] his flag. But it would be too tedious to relate to you all the particular acts in relation solely to French citizens; it will be suffi cient for me to say to you, that every where, where there are Frenchmen, (I don't speak of the small number who have abjured their country) these Frenchmen will have a right to the protection of the government, and will be every where assured [assuree] of obtaining indemnity for the damage done to their persons or to their property.

"There are other grievances yet more serious, and from which France has a right to believe that the United States has a project of giving her inquietude for her distant possessions, and for that of her allies. This has reference to the free commerce between the Americans and the revolted blacks of St. Domingo, the affair of Miranda, and to the meditated attack on the Spaniards on the Sabine; an enterprize which would not have been given up, but for the necessity under which your government found itself of causing its troops to fall back to guard New Orleans against an invasion by internal enemies.

"I was far from thinking, sir, that the offence of the commerce with the slaves in the revolted part of St. Domingo-the law of the embargo confirming the prohibitory law, passed by Congress in 1806 I could not presume that the embargo would be raised, and that the law against this commerce would not be continued. What, sir, the intercourse is prohibited between the United States and all the dependencies of the empire, under circumstances, when the commercial relations would be the most advantageous to the two states, and you tolerate them only with that one of our possessions where we have the greatest interest to proscribe them! and it is to be remarked, that it is always when France has to combat new coalitions on the other continent, that it would seem that efforts

are made to form enterprizes against its possessions, or those of its allies, in this one. It is also proper to place among the number of grievances with which France has to charge the United States, the want of opposition, or rather the useless opposition, which the federal government has made to the impressment of its sailors, seized in contempt of its flag, and with whom the English arm their vessels against us. I have often, sir, and often in vain, protested against this outrage of Great Britain towards your government, and which has become a serious injury [offence] on the part of your government towards France. You furnish personal aid [secours personnels] to our enemies. What could you do more if you were at war with us? Without doubt, it will not escape the present executive, that an amendment is absolutely necessary to render uniform the treatment which our sailors and soldiers meet with in this country, and that which your sailors and soldiers meet with in France.

"I have not suffered my court to be ignorant of the abuses without number, and extremely prejudicial to its interests, daily resulting from a want of a police in the United States, in regard to this affair. I am very far, sir, from charging your government with the means the most shameful of seduction, which are employed to seduce our sailors and our soldiers to desert; but has it done all that it ought to have done to prevent it? and that extreme facility with which, when they wish it, [au besoin] men drawn off from their country and their sovereign, are naturalizeddoes it accord with the incontestible right of governments to recover, even without demanding them, their subjects whom artifice or force has drawn off from their service? and France, sir, has it not given on this subject, as on many others, an example of the reciprocal respect which governments owe to each other, and which they observe in Europe even in the midst of the horrors of war? and have I not already warned the executive council to put an end to these abuses?