Letter to George Washington
On Paine's Service to America
Thomas Paine
[30 July, 1796]
The following letter includes a number of
footnotes entered by Thomas Paine on his copy. These are placed
in brackets at the actual location of the respective footnote
and noted with the italicized signature of the Author. In
addition, the editor of this text has added some few essential
notes which are handled similarly, but signed Editor.
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As censure is but awkwardly softened by apology, I shall offer to you
no apology for this letter. The eventful crisis to which your double
politics have conducted the affairs of your country, requires an
investigation uncramped by ceremony.
There was a time when the fame of America, moral and political, stood
fair and high in the world. The lustre of her Revolution extended
itself to every individual; and to be a citizen of America gave a
title to respect in Europe. Neither meanness nor ingratitude had been
mingled in the composition of her character. Her resistance to the
attempted tyranny of England left her unsuspected of the one, and her
open acknowledgment of the aid she received from France precluded all
suspicion of the other. The Washington of politics had not then
appeared.
At the time I left America (April, I787) the Continental Convention,
that formed the Federal Constitution was on the point of meeting.
Since that time new schemes of politics, and new distinctions of
parties, have arisen. The term Anti-federalist has been
applied to all those who combated the defects of that Constitution, or
opposed the measures of your administration.
It was only to the absolute necessity of establishing some Federal
authority, extending equally over all the States, that an instrument
so inconsistent as the present Federal Constitution is, obtained a
suffrage. I would have voted for it myself, had I been in America, or
even for a worse, rather than have had none, provided it contained the
means of remedying its defects by the same appeal to the people by
which it was to be established. It is always better policy to leave
removable errors to expose themselves than to hazard too much in
contending against them theoretically.
I have introduced these observations, not only to mark the general
difference between Anti-federalist and Anti-constitutionalist, but to
preclude the effect, and even the application, of the former of these
terms to myself.
I declare myself opposed to several matters in the Constitution,
particularly to the manner in which what is called the Executive is
formed, and to the long duration of the Senate; and if I live to
return to America, I will use all my endeavors to have them altered.
[I have always been opposed to the mode of
refining government up to an individual, or what is called a single
executive. Such a man will always be the chief of a party. A plurality
is far better: It combines the mass of a nation better together: And
besides this. it is necessary to the manly mind of a republic that it
loses the debasing idea of obeying an individual - Author] I
also declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your
administration; for I know it to have been deceitful, if not
perfidious, as I shall show in the course of this letter.
But as to the point of consolidating the States into a Federal
Government, it so happens, that the proposition for that purpose came
originally from myself. I proposed it in a letter to Chancellor
Livingston in the spring of I782, while that gentleman was Minister
for Foreign Affairs. The five per cent duty recommended by Congress
had then fallen through, having been adopted by some of the States,
altered by others, rejected by Rhode Island, and repealed by Virginia
after it had been consented to.
The proposal in the letter I allude to, was to get over the whole
difficulty at once, by annexing a Continental legislative body to
Congress; for in order to have any law of the Union uniform, the case
could only be that either Congress, as it then stood, must frame the
law, and the States severally adopt it without alteration, or the
States must erect a Continental legislature for the purpose.
Chancellor Livingston, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and myself
had a meeting at the house of Robert Morris on the subject of that
letter. There was no diversity of opinion on the proposition for a
Continental legislature: the only difficulty was on the manner of
bringing the proposition forward. For my own part, as I considered it
as a remedy in reserve, that could be applied at any time when the
states saw themselves wrong enough to be put right (which did not
appear to be the case at that time), I did not see the propriety of
urging it precipitately, and declined being the publisher of it
myself.
After this account of a fact, the leaders of your party will scarcely
have the hardiness to apply to me the term of Anti-federalist. But I
can go to a date and to a fact beyond this; for the proposition for
electing a Continental convention to form the Continental Government
is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet "Common Sense."
Having thus cleared away a little of the rubbish that might otherwise
have lain in my way, I return to the point of time at which the
present Federal Constitution and your administration began.
It was very well said by an anonymous writer in Philadelphia, about a
year before that period, that "thirteen staves and ne'er a hoop
will not make a barrel," [The writer was
Peletiah Webster, a Philadelphia merchant and political economist -
Editor.] and as any kind of hooping the barrel, however
defectively executed, would be better than none, it was scarcely
possible but that considerable advantages must arise from the Federal
hooping of the States. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend
of America beheld, as the natural effect of union, her rising
prosperity; and it was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even
in the blossom, with the germ of corruption.
Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the
moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the Revolution were
lavished upon partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was
sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretense of
faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud. From
such a beginning what else could be expected than what has happened? A
mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation; treachery
and ingratitude to another.
Some vices make their approach with such a splendid appearance that
we scarcely know to what class of moral distinctions they belong. They
are rather virtues corrupted than vices, originally. But meanness and
ingratitude have nothing equivocal in their character. There is not a
trait in them that renders them doubtful. They are so originally vice
that they are generated in the dung of other vices, and crawl into
existence with the filth upon their back. The fugitives have found
protection in you, and the levee-room is their place of rendezvous.
As the Federal Constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as
the original, of the form of the British Government, an imitation of
its vices was naturally to be expected. So intimate is the connection
between form and practice, that to adopt the one is to invite
the other. Imitation is naturally progressive and is rapidly so in
matters that are vicious.
Soon after the Federal Constitution arrived in England, I received a
letter from a female literary correspondent (a native of New York),
very well mixed with friendship, sentiment and politics. In my answer
to that letter, I permitted myself to ramble into the wilderness of
imagination, and to anticipate what might hereafter be the condition
of America. I had no idea that the picture I then drew was realizing
so fast, and still less that Mr. Washington was hurrying it on. As the
extract I allude to is congenial with the subject I am upon, I here
transcribe it:
You touch me on a very tender point when you say that my
friends on your side the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of
my abandoning America. They are right. I had rather see my horse
Button eating the grass of Bordentown or Morrisania than see all the
pomp and show of Europe.
A thousand years hence (for I must indulge a few thoughts), perhaps
in less, America may be what Europe now is. The innocence of her
character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may
sound like a romance and her inimitable virtue as if it had never
been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled
to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a
sigh from rustic sensibility, whilst the fashionable of that day,
enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the
fact.
When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of the
nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret
than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums,
lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship;
but when the empire of America shall fall, the subject for
contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass
and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a
temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or
there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful
thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of
human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell. Read this, and
then ask if I forget America.
Impressed, as I was, with apprehensions of this kind, I had America
constantly in my mind in all the publications I afterwards made. The
first and still more the second part of the "Rights of Man"
bear evident marks of this watchfulness; and the "Dissertation on
First Principles of Government" goes more directly to the point
than either of the former. I now pass on to other subjects.
It will be supposed by those into whose hands this letter may fall
that I have some personal resentment against you; I will therefore
settle this point before I proceed further.
If I have any resentment you must acknowledge that I have not been
hasty in declaring it; neither would it now be declared (for what are
private resentments to the public) if the cause of it did not unite
itself as well with your public as with your private character, and
with the motives of your political conduct.
The part I acted in the American Revolution is well known; I shall
not here repeat it. I know also that had it not been for the aid
received from France, in men, money and ships, that your cold and
unmilitary conduct (as I shall show in the course of this letter)
would in all probability have lost America; at least she would not
have been the independent nation she now is. You slept away your time
in the field, till the finances of the country were completely
exhausted, and you have but little share in the glory of the final
event. It is time, Sir, to speak the undisguised language of
historical truth.
Elevated to the chair of the Presidency, you assumed the merit of
everything to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your
constitution began to appear. You commenced your Presidential career
by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you traveled
America from one end to the other to put yourself in the way of
receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James II. As
to what were your views, for, if you are not great enough to have
ambition, you are little enough to have vanity, they cannot be
directly inferred from expressions of your own; buy the partisans of
your politics have divulged the secret.
John Adams has said (and John it is known was always a speller after
places and offices, and never thought his little services were highly
enough paid) John has said, that as Mr. Washington had no child, the
Presidency should be made hereditary in the family of Lund Washington.
John might then have counted upon some sinecure himself, and a
provision for his descendants. He did not go so far as to say, also,
that the Vice-Presidency should be hereditary in the family of John
Adams. He prudently left that to stand on the ground that one good
turn deserves another. [Two persons to whom
John Adams said this, told me of it. The secretary of Mr. Jay was
present when it was told to me - Author]
John Adams is one of those men who never contemplated the origin of
government, or comprehended anything of first principles. If he had,
he might have seen that the right to set up and establish hereditary
government never did, and never can, exist in any generation at any
time whatever; that it is of the nature of treason; because it is an
attempt to take away the rights of all the minors living at that time,
and of all succeeding generations. It is of a degree beyond common
treason. It is a sin against nature. The equal right of every
generation is a right fixed in the nature of things. It belongs to the
son when of age, as it belonged to the father before him.
John Adams would himself deny the right that any former deceased
generation could have to decree authoritatively a succession of
governors over him, or over his children; and yet he assumes the
pretended right, treasonable as it is, of acting it himself. His
ignorance is his best excuse.
John Jay has said (and this John was always the sycophant of
everything in power, from Mr. Gerard in America, to Grenville in
England), John Jay has said that the Senate should have been appointed
for life. He would then have been sure of never wanting a lucrative
appointment for himself, and have had no fears about impeachment.
These are the disguised traitors that call themselves Federalists.
[If Mr. John Jay desires to know on what
authority I say this. I will give that authority publicly when he
chooses to call for it - Author]
Could I have known to what degree of corruption and perfidy the
administrative part of the. Government of America had descended, I
could have been at no loss to have understood the reservedness of Mr.
Washington toward me, during my imprisonment in the Luxembourg. There
are cases in which silence is a loud language. I will here explain the
cause of that imprisonment and return to Mr. Washington afterwards.
In the course of that rage, terror and suspicion which the brutal
letter of the Duke of Brunswick [the Duke of
Brunswick was the commander of the Prussian forces which attacked
France in July, I792. The letter referred to was a manifesto warning
the French people that if in the future any further violence were to
be committed against the royal family, Paris would be turned over to "military
execution and total annihilation." The people of Paris were
outraged and angered and the manifesto stimulated an outpouring of
French citizens to resist the invaders - Editor] first started
into existence in France, it happened that almost every man who was
opposed to violence, or who was not violent himself, became suspected.
I had constantly been opposed to everything which was of the nature or
of the appearance of violence; but as I had always done it in a manner
that showed it to be a principle founded in my heart, and not a
political maneuver, it precluded the pretense of accusing me. I was
reached, however, under another pretense.
A decree was passed to imprison all persons born in England; but as I
was a member of the convention, and had been complimented with the
honorary style of Citizen of France, as Mr. Washington and some other
Americans had been, this decree fell short of reaching me. A motion
was afterwards made and carried, supported chiefly by Bourdon de
I'Oise, for expelling foreigners from the Convention. My expulsion
being thus effected, the two committees of Public Safety and of
General Surety, of which Robespierre was the dictator, put me in
arrestation under the former decree for imprisoning persons born in
England. Having thus shown under what pretense the imprisonment was
effected, I come to speak of such parts of the case as apply between
me and Mr. Washington, either as a President or as an individual.
I have always considered that a foreigner, such as I was in fact,
with respect to France, might be a member of a convention for framing
a constitution without affecting his right of citizenship in the
country to which he belongs, but not a member of a government after a
constitution is formed; and I have uniformly acted upon this
distinction. To be a member of a government requires that a person be
in allegiance to that government and to the country locally. But a
constitution, being a thing of principle, and not of action, and
which, after it is formed, is to be referred to the people for their
approbation or rejection, does not require allegiance in the persons
forming and proposing it; and besides this, it is only to the thing
after it be formed and established, and to the country after its
governmental character is fixed by the adoption of a constitution,
that the allegiance can be given.
No oath of allegiance or of citizenship was required of the members
who composed the Convention: there was nothing existing in form to
swear allegiance to. If any such condition had been required, I could
not, as citizen of America in fact, though citizen of France by
compliment, have accepted a seat in the Convention.
As my citizenship in America was not altered or diminished by
anything I had done in Europe (on the contrary, it ought to be
considered as strengthened, for it was the American principle of
government that I was endeavoring to spread in Europe), and it is the
duty of every government to charge itself with the care of any of its
citizens who may happen to fall under an arbitrary persecution abroad,
and is also one of the reasons for which ambassadors or ministers are
appointed-it was the duty of the Executive Department in America, to
have made (at least) some inquiries about me, as soon as it heard of
my imprisonment.
But if this had not been the case, that government owed it to me on
every ground and principle of honor and gratitude. Mr. Washington owed
it to me on every score of private acquaintance, I will not now say,
friendship; for it has some time been known by those who know him,
that he has no friendships; that he is incapable of forming any; he
can serve or desert a man, or a cause, with constitutional
indifference; and it is this cold, hermaphrodite faculty that imposed
itself upon the world and was credited for a while, by enemies as by
friends, for prudence, moderation and impartiality.
Soon after I was put into arrestation and imprisonment in the
Luxembourg, the Americans who were then in Paris went in a body to the
bar of the Convention to reclaim me. They were answered by the then
President Vadier, who has since absconded, that I was born in England,
and it was signified to them by some of the Committee of General
Surety to whom they were referred (I have been told it was Billaud
Varennes) that their reclamation of me was only the act of
individuals, without any authority from the American Government.
A few days after this, all communication from persons imprisoned to
any person without the prison was cut off by an order of the police. I
neither saw, nor heard from, anybody for six months; and the only hope
that remained to me was that a new Minister would arrive from America
to supersede Morris, and that he would be authorized to inquire into
the cause of my imprisonment. But even this hope, in the state to
which matters were daily arriving, was too remote to have any
consolatory effect, and I contented myself with the thought that I
might be remembered when it would be too late.
There is perhaps no condition from which a man conscious of his own
uprightness cannot derive consolation; for it is in itself a
consolation for him to find that he can bear that condition with
calmness and fortitude.
From about the middle of March (I794) to the fall of Robespierre July
twenty-ninth (9th of Thermidor), the state of things was a continual
scene of horror. No man could count upon life for twenty-four hours.
To such a pitch of rage and suspicion were Robespierre and his
committee arrived, that it seemed as if they feared to leave a man
living. Scarcely a night passed in which ten, twenty, thirty, forty,
fifty or more were not taken out of the prison, carried before a
pretended tribunal in the morning and guillotined before night.
One hundred and sixty-nine were taken out of the Luxembourg one
night, in the month of July, and one hundred and sixty of them
guillotined. A list of two hundred more, according to the report in
the prison, was preparing a few days before Robespierre fell. In this
last list I have good reason to believe I was included. A memorandum
in the hand-writing of Robespierre was afterwards produced in the
Convention, by the committee to whom the papers of Robespierre were
referred, in these words:
Demander que Thomas Payne soit Demand that Thomas Paine
be de decrete d'accusation pour les inte- creed of accusation for
the interests rets de I'Amerique, autant que de of America as well
as of France. la France.
I had then been imprisoned seven months, and the silence of the
Executive part of the Government of America (Mr. Washington) upon the
case, and upon everything respecting me, was explanation enough to
Robespierre that he might proceed to extremities.
A violent fever which had nearly terminated my existence, was, I
believe, the circumstance that preserved it. I was not in a condition
to be removed, or to know of what was passing, or of what had passed,
for more than a month. It makes a blank in my remembrance of life. The
first thing I was informed of was the fall of Robespierre.
About a week after this, Mr. Monroe arrived to supersede Gouverneur
Morris, and as soon as I was able to write a note legible enough to be
read, I found a way to convey one to him by means of the man who
lighted the lamps in the prison; and whose unabated friendship to me,
from whom he had never received any service, and with difficulty
accepted any recompense, puts the character of Mr. Washington to
shame.
In a few days I received a message from Mr. Monroe, conveyed to me in
a note from an intermediate person, with assurance of his friendship,
and expressing a desire that I would rest the case in his hands. After
a fortnight or more had passed, and hearing nothing further, I wrote
to a friend who was then in Paris, a citizen of Philadelphia,
requesting him to inform me what was the true situation of things with
respect to me. I was sure that something was the matter; I began to
have hard thoughts of Mr. Washington, but I was unwilling to encourage
them.
In about ten days I received an answer to my letter, in which the
writer says, "Mr. Monroe has told me that he has no order
[meaning from the President, Mr. Washington] respecting you, but that
he (Mr. Monroe) will do everything in his power to liberate you; but,
from what I learn from the Americans lately arrived in Paris, you are
not considered, either by the American Government, or by the
individuals, as an American citizen."
I was now at no loss to understand Mr..Washington and his new fangled
faction, and that their policy was silently to leave me to fall in
France. They were rushing as fast as they could venture, without
awakening the jealousy of America, into all the vices and corruptions
of the British Government; and it was no more consistent with the
policy of Mr. Washington, and those who immediately surrounded him,
than it was with that of Robespierre or of Pitt, that I should
survive. They have, however, missed the mark, and the reaction is upon
themselves.
Upon the receipt of the letter just alluded to, I sent a memorial to
Mr. Monroe, which the reader will find in the (see end of
text-Editor), and I received from him the following answer. It is
dated the eighteenth of September, but did not come to hand till about
the fourth of October. I was then falling into a relapse, the weather
was becoming damp and cold, fuel was not to be had, and the abscess in
my side (the consequence of these things and of the want of air and
exercise), was beginning to form, and which has continued immovable
ever since. Here follows Mr. Monroe's letter:
PARIS, September 18, I794
DEAR SIR:
I was favored soon after my arrival here with several letters from
you, and more latterly with one in the character of a Memorial upon
the subject of your confinement; and should have answered them at
the times they were respectively written had I not concluded you
would have calculated with certainty upon the deep interest I take
in your welfare, and the pleasure with which I shall embrace every
opportunity in my power to serve you. I should still pursue the same
course, and for reasons which must obviously occur, if I did not
find that you are disquieted with apprehensions upon interesting
points, and which justice to you and our country equally forbid you
should entertain.
You mention that you have been informed you are not considered as
an American citizen by the Americans, and that you have likewise
heard that I had no instructions respecting you by the Government. I
doubt not the person who gave you the information meant well, but I
suspect he did not even convey accurately his own ideas on the first
point: for I presume the most he could say is that you had likewise
become a French citizen, and which by no means deprived you of being
an American one.
Even this, however, may be doubted, I mean the acquisition of
citizenship in France, and I confess you have said much to show that
it has not been made. I really suspect that this was all that the
gentleman who wrote to you, and t those Americans he heard speak
upon the subject meant. It becomes my duty, however, to declare to
you, that I consider you as an American citizen, and that you are
considered universally in that character by the people of America.
As such you are entitled to my attention; and so far as it can be
given consistently with those obligations which are mutual between
every government and even a transient passenger, you shall receive
it.
The Congress have never decided upon the subject of citizenship in
a manner to regard the present case. By being with us through the
Revolution you are of our country as absolutely as if you had been
born there, and you are no more of England than every native
American is. This is the true doctrine in the present case, so far
as it becomes complicated with any other consideration. I have
mentioned it to make you easy upon the only point which could give
you any disquietude.
Is it necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen, I
speak of the great mass of people, are interested in your welfare?
They have not forgotten the history of their own Revolution and the
difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they review its
several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of
the merits of those who served them in that great and arduous
conflict. The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust
never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them
as not only having rendered important service in our own Revolution,
but as being, on a more extensive scale, the friend of human rights,
and a distinguished and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To
the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americans are not, nor can they be,
indifferent.
Of the sense which the President has always entertained of your
merits, and of his friendly disposition toward you, you are too well
assured to require any declaration of it from me. That I forward his
wishes in seeking your safety is what I well know, and this will
form an additional obligation on me to perform what I should
otherwise consider as a duty.
You are, in my opinion, at present menaced by no kind of danger. To
liberate you, will be an object of my endeavors, and as soon as
possible. But you must, until that event shall be accomplished, bear
your situation with patience and fortitude. You will likewise have
the justice to recollect, that I am placed here upon a difficult
theater (This I presume alludes to the embarrassments which the
strange conduct of Gouverneur Morris had occasioned, and which, I
well know, had created suspicions of the sincerity of Mr.Washington
- Author), many important objects to attend to, with few to consult.
It becomes me in pursuit of those to regulate my conduct in respect
to each, as to the manner and the time, as will, in my judgment, be
best calculated to accomplish the whole.
With great esteem and respect consider me personally your friend,
JAMES MONROE.
The part in Mr. Monroe's letter, in which he speaks of the President
(Mr. Washington), is put in soft language. Mr. Monroe knew what Mr.
Washington had said formerly, and he was willing to keep that in view.
But the fact is, not only that Mr. Washington had given no orders to
Mr. Monroe, as the letter [of Whiteside] stated, but he did Not so
much as say to him, inquire if Mr. Paine be dead or alive, in prison
or out, or see if there be any assistance we can give him.
While these matters were passing, the liberations from the prisons
were numerous; from twenty to forty in the course of almost every
twenty-four hours. The continuance of my imprisonment after a new
Minister had arrived immediately from America, which was now more than
two months, was a matter so obviously strange, that I found the
character of the American Government spoken of in very unqualified
terms of reproach; not only by those who still remained in prison, but
by those who were liberated, and by persons who had access to the
prison from without. Under these circumstances I wrote again to Mr.
Monroe, and found occasion, among other things, to say: "It will
not add to the popularity of Mr. Washington to have it believed in
America, as it is believed here, that he connives at my imprisonment."
The case, so far as it respected Mr. Monroe, was, that having to get
over the difficulties, which the strange conduct of Gouverneur Morris
had thrown in the way of a successor, and having no authority from the
American Government to speak officially upon anything relating to me,
he found himself obliged to proceed by unofficial means with
individual members; for though Robespierre was overthrown, the
Robespierrian members of the Committee of Public Safety still remained
in considerable force, and had they found out that Mr. Monroe had no
official authority upon the case, they would have paid little or no
regard to his reclamation of me. In the meantime my health was
suffering exceedingly, the dreary prospect of winter was coming on,
and imprisonment was still a thing of danger.
After the Robespierrian members of the Committee were removed by the
expiration of their time of serving, Mr. Monroe reclaimed me, and I
was liberated the fourth of November. Mr. Monroe arrived in Paris the
beginning of August before. All that period of my imprisonment, at
least, I owe not to Robespierre, but to his colleague in projects,
George Washington.
Immediately upon my liberation, Mr. Monroe invited me to his house,
where I remained more than a year and a half; and I speak of his aid
and friendship, as an open-hearted man will always do in such a case,
with respect and gratitude.
Soon after my liberation, the Convention passed an unanimous vote to
invite me to return to my seat among them. The times were still
unsettled and dangerous, as well from without as within, for the
coalition was unbroken, and the Constitution not settled. I chose,
however, to accept the invitation; for as I undertake nothing but what
I believe to be right, I abandon nothing that I undertake; and I was
willing also to show that, as I was not of a cast of mind to be
deterred by prospects or retrospects of danger, so neither were my
principles to be weakened by misfortune or perverted by disgust.
Being now once more abroad in the world, I began to find that I was{
not the only one who had conceived an unfavorable opinion of Mr.
Washington; it was evident that his character was on the decline as
well among Americans as among foreigners of different nations. From
being the chief of the government, he had made himself the chief of a
party; and his integrity was questioned, for his politics had a
doubtful appearance. The mission of Mr. Jay to London, notwithstanding
there was an American Minister there already, had then taken place,
and was beginning to be talked of. It appeared to others, as it did to
me, to be enveloped in mystery, which every day served either to
increase or to explain into matter of suspicion.
In the year I790, or about that time, Mr. Washington, as President,
had sent Gouverneur Morris to London, as his secret agent to have some
communication with the British Ministry. To cover the agency of Morris
it was given out, I know not by whom, that he went as an agent from
Robert Morris to borrow money in Europe, and the report was permitted
to pass uncontradicted. The event of Morris's negotiation was, that
Mr. Hammond was sent Minister from England to America, Pinckney from
America to England, and himself Minister to France.
If, while Morris was Minister in France, he was not an emissary of
the British Ministry and the coalesced powers, he gave strong reasons
to suspect him of it. No one who saw his conduct, and heard his
conversation, could doubt his being in their interest; and had he not
got off the time he did, after his recall, he would have been in
arrestation. Some letters of his had fallen into the hands of the
Committee of Public Safety, and inquiry was making after him.
A great bustle had been made by Mr. Washington about the conduct of
Genet in America, while that of his own Minister, Morris, in France,
was infinitely more reproachable. If Genet was imprudent or rash, he
was not treacherous; but Morris was all three. He was the enemy of the
French Revolution, in every stage of it. But notwithstanding this
conduct on the part of Morris, and the known profligacy of his
character, Mr. Washington in a letter he wrote to him at the time of
recalling him on the complaint and request of the Committee of Public
Safety, assures him, that though he had complied with that request, he
still retained the same esteem and friendship for him as before.
This letter Morris was foolish enough to tell of; and, as his own
character and conduct were notorious, the telling of it could have but
one effect, which was that of implicating the character of the writer.
Morris still loiters in Europe, chiefly in England; and Mr. Washington
is still in correspondence with him. Mr. Washington ought, therefore,
to expect, especially since his conduct in the affairs of Jay's
Treaty, that France must consider Morris and Washington as men of the
same description. The chief difference, however, between the two is
(for in politics there is none), that the one is profligate enough to
profess an indifference about moral principles, and the other is
prudent enough to conceal the want of them.
About three months after I was at liberty, the official note of Jay
to Grenville on the subject of the capture of American vessels by the
British cruisers appeared in the American papers that arrived at
Paris. Everything was of a-piece. Everything was mean. The same kind
of character went to all circumstances public or private. Disgusted at
this national degradation, as well as at the particular conduct of Mr.
Washington to me, I wrote to him (Mr. Washington) on the twenty-second
of February (I795) under cover to the then Secretary of State (Mr.
Randolph), and entrusted the letter to Mr. Letombe, who was appointed
French Consul to Philadelphia, and was on the point of taking his
departure. When I supposed Mr. Letombe had sailed, I mentioned the
letter to Mr. Monroe, and as I was then in his house, I showed it to
him. He expressed a wish that I would recall it, which he supposed
might be done, as he had learned that Mr. Letombe had not then sailed.
I agreed to do so, and it was returned by Mr. Letombe under cover to
Mr. Monroe.
The letter, however, will now reach Mr. Washington publicly in the
course of this work.
About the month of September following, I had a severe relapse which
gave occasion to the report of my death. I had felt it coming on a
considerable time before, which occasioned me to hasten the work I had
then in hand, the second part of the "Age of Reason." When I
had finished that work, I bestowed another letter on Mr. Washington,
which I sent under cover to Mr. Benjamin Franklin Bache of
Philadelphia. The letter is as follows:
Paris, September 20, I795.
Sir:
I had written you a letter by Mr. Letombe, French Consul, but, at
the request of Mr. Monroe, I withdrew it, and the letter is still by
me. I was the more easily prevailed upon to do this, as it was then
my intention to have returned to America the latter end of the
present year, I795; but the illness I now suffer prevents me. In
case I had come, I should have applied to you for such parts of your
official letters (and of your private ones, if you had chosen to
give them) as contained any instructions or directions either to Mr.
Monroe, or to Mr. Morris, or to any other person respecting me; for
after you were informed of my imprisonment in France, it was
incumbent on you to have made some inquiry into the cause, as you
might very well conclude that I had not the opportunity of informing
you of it.
I cannot understand your silence upon this subject upon any other
ground, than as connivance at my imprisonment; and this is the
manner it is understood here, and will be understood in America,
unless you give me authority for contradicting it. I therefore write
you this letter, to propose to you to send me copies of any letters
you have written that may remove that suspicion. In the preface to
the second part of the "Age of Reason," I have given a
memorandum from the handwriting of Robespierre, in which he proposed
a decree of accusation against me, "for the interests of
America as well as of France." He could have no cause for
putting America in the case, but by interpreting the silence of the
American Government into connivance and consent.
I was imprisoned on the ground of being born in England; and your ,
silence in not inquiring into the cause of that imprisonment, and
reclaiming me against it, was tacitly giving me up. I ought not to
have suspected you of treachery; but whether I recover from the
illness I now suffer or not, I shall continue to think you
treacherous, till you give me cause to think other wise. I am sure
you would have found yourself more at your ease had you acted by me
as you ought; for whether your desertion of me was intended to
gratify the English Government, or to let me fall into destruction
in France that you might exclaim the louder against the French
Revolution, or whether you hoped by my extinction to meet with less
opposition in mounting up the American Government-either of these
will involve you in reproach you will not easily shake off.
THOMAS PAINE.
Here follows the letter above alluded to, which I had stopped in
complaisance to Mr. Monroe:
PARIS, February 22, I795.
Sir:
As it is always painful to reproach those one would wish to
respect, it is not without some difficulty that I have taken the
resolution to write to you. The dangers to which I have been exposed
cannot have been unknown to you, and the guarded silence you have
observed upon that circumstance is what I ought not to have expected
from you, either as a friend or as President of the United States.
You knew enough of my character to be assured that I could not have
deserved imprisonment in France; and, without knowing anything more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for
my safety. Every motive arising from recollection of times past
ought to have suggested to you the propriety of such a measure. But
I cannot find that you have so much as directed any inquiry to be
made whether I was in prison or at liberty, dead or alive; what the
cause of that imprisonment was, or whether there was any service or
assistance you could render. Is this what I ought to have expected
from America, after the part I had acted toward her, or will it
rebound to her honor or to yours, that I tell the story?
I do not hesitate to say that you have not served America with more
disinterestedness, or greater zeal, or more fidelity, than myself,
and I know not if with better effect. After the Revolution of
America was established I ventured into the new scenes of
difficulties to extend the principles which that Revolution had
produced, and you rested at home to partake of the advantages. In
the progress of events, you beheld yourself a President in America,
and me a prisoner in France. You folded your arms, forgot your
friend and became silent.
As everything I have been doing in Europe was connected with my
wishes for the prosperity of America, I ought to be the more
surprised at this conduct on the part of her Government. It leaves
me but one mode of explanation, which is that everything is not as
it ought to be amongst you, and that the presence of a man who might
disapprove, and who had credit enough with the country to be heard
and believed, was not wished for. This was the operating motive with
the despotic faction that imprisoned me in France (though the
pretense was, that I was a foreigner), and those that have been
silent and inactive toward me in America, appear to me to have acted
from the same motive. It is impossible for me to discover any other.
After the part I have taken in the Revolution of America, it is
natural that I feel interested in whatever relates to her character
and prosperity. Though I am not on the spot to see what is
immediately acting there, I see some part of what she is acting in
Europe. For your own sake, as well as for that of America, I was
both surprised and concerned at the appointment of Gouverneur Morris
to be Minister to France. His conduct has proved that the opinion I
had formed of that appointment was well founded. I wrote that
opinion to Mr. Jefferson at the time, and I was frank enough to say
the same thing to Morris - that it was an unfortunate appointment.
His prating, insignificant pomposity rendered him at once offensive,
suspected and ridiculous; and his total neglect of all business had
so disgusted the Americans that they proposed drawing up a protest
against him.
He carried this neglect to such an extreme that it was necessary to
inform him of it; and I asked him one day if he did not feel himself
ashamed to take the money of the country, and do nothing for it? But
Morris is so fond of profit and voluptuousness that he cares nothing
about character. Had he not been removed at the time he was, I think
his conduct would have precipitated the two countries into a
rupture; and in this case, hated systematically as America is and
ever will be by the British Government, and at the same time
suspected by France, the commerce of America would have fallen a
prey to both countries.
If the inconsistent conduct of Morris exposed the interest of
America to some hazard in France, the pusillanimous conduct of Mr.
Jay in England has rendered the American Government contemptible in
Europe. Is it possible that any man who has contributed to the
independence of America, and to free her from tyranny and injustice
of the British Government, can read without shame and indignation
the note of Jay to Grenville? It is a satire upon the Declaration of
Independence, and an encouragement to the British Government to
treat America with contempt. At the time this Minister of petitions
was acting this miserable part he had every means in his hands to
enable him to have done his business as he ought. The success or
failure of his mission depended upon the success or failure of the
French arms.
Had France failed, Mr. Jay might have put his humble petition in
his pocket and gone home. The case happened to be otherwise, and he
has sacrificed the honor and perhaps all the advantages of it by
turning petitioner. I take it for granted that he was sent over to
demand indemnification for the captured property; and, in this case,
if he thought he wanted a preamble to his demand, he might have
said, "That, though the Government of England might suppose
itself under the necessity of seizing American property bound to
France, yet that supposed necessity could not preclude
indemnification to the proprietors, who, acting under the authority
of their own government, were not accountable to any other."
But Mr. Jay sets out with an implied recognition of the right of the
British Government to seize and condemn: for he enters his complaint
against the irregularity of the seizures and the con- demnation, as
if they were reprehensible only by not being conformable to the
terms of the proclamation under which they were seized.
Instead of being the envoy of a government, he goes over like a
lawyer to demand a new trial. I can hardly help thinking that
Grenville wrote that note himself and Jay signed it; for the style
of it is domestic and not diplomatic. The term, His Majesty, used
without any descriptive epithet, always signifies the King, whom the
Minister that speaks represents. If this sinking of the demand into
a petition was a juggle between Grenville and Jay, to cover the
indemnification, I think it will end in another juggle, that of
never paying the money, and be made use of afterwards to preclude
the right of demanding it: for Mr. Jay has virtually disowned the
right by appealing to the magna- nimity of His Majesty against the
capturers. He has made this magnanimous majesty the umpire in the
case, and the Government of the United States must abide by the
decision. If, Sir, I turn some part of this business into ridicule,
it is to avoid the unpleasant sensation of serious indignation.
Among other things which I confess I do not understand, is the
proclama- tion of neutrality. This has always appeared to me as an
assumption on the part of the executive not warranted by the
Constitution. But passing this over, as a disputable case, and
considering it only as political, the consequence has been that of
sustaining the losses of war without the balance of reprisals. When
the profession of neutrality, on the part of America, was answered
by hostilities on the part of Britain, the object and intention of
that neutrality existed no longer; and to maintain it after this,
was not only to encourage further insults and depredations, but was
an informal breach of neutrality toward France, by passively
contributing to the aid of her enemy. That the Government of England
considered the American Government as pusillanimous, is evident from
the increasing insolence of the conduct of the former toward the
latter, till the affair of General Wayne. She then saw that it might
be possible to kick a government into some degree of spirit.
So far as the proclamation of neutrality was intended to prevent a
dissolute spirit of privateering in America under foreign colors, it
was undoubtedly laudable; but to continue it as a government
neutrality, after the commerce of America was made war upon, was
submission and not neutrality. I have heard so much about this thing
called neutrality that I know not if the ungenerous and dishonorable
silence (for I must call it such) that has been observed by your
part of the Government toward me, during my imprisonment, has not in
some measure arisen from that policy.
Though I have written you this letter, you ought not to suppose it
has been an agreeable undertaking to me. On the contrary, I assure
you, it has caused me some disquietude. I am sorry you have given me
cause to do it; for, as I have always remembered your former
friendship with pleasure, I suffer a loss by your depriving me of
that sentiment.
THOMAS PAINE.
That this letter was not written in very good temper, is very
evident; but it was just such a letter as his conduct appeared to me
to merit, and everything on his part since has served to confirm that
opinion. Had I wanted a commentary on his silence, with respect to my
imprisonment in France, some of his faction have furnished me with it.
What I here allude to is a publication in a Philadelphia paper, copied
afterwards into a New York paper, both under the patronage of the
Washington faction, in which the writer, still supposing me in prison
in France, wonders at my lengthy respite from the scaffold; and he
marks his politics still further, by saying:
It appears, moreover, that the people of England did not
relish his (Thomas Paine's) opinions quite so well as he expected,
and that for one of his last pieces, as destructive to the peace and
happiness of their country (meaning, I suppose, the "Rights of
Man"), they threatened our knighterrant with such serious
vengeance, that, to avoid a trip to Botany Bay, he fled over to
France, as a less dangerous voyage.
I am not refuting or contradicting the falsehood of this publication,
for it is sufficiently notorious; neither am I censuring the writer:
on the contrary, I thank him for the explanation he has incautiously
given of the principles of the Washington faction. Insignificant,
however, as the piece is, it was capable of having some ill effects
had it arrived in France during my imprisonment, and in the time of
Robespierre; and I am not uncharitable in supposing that this was one
of the intentions of the writer. [I know not
who the writer of the piece is, but some of the Americans say it is
Phineas Bond, an American refugee, but now a British consul; and that
he writes under the signature of Peter Skunk or Peter Porcupine, or
some such signature -Author.]
I have now done with Mr. Washington on the score of private affairs.
It would have been far more agreeable to me had his conduct been such
as not to have merited these reproaches. Errors or caprices of the
temper can be pardoned and forgotten; but a cold deliberate crime of
the heart, such as Mr. Washington is capable of acting, is not to be
washed away. I now proceed to other matter.
After Jay's note to Grenville arrived in Paris from America, the
character of everything that was to follow might be easily foreseen;
and it was upon this anticipation that my letter of February the
twenty-second was founded. The event has proved that I was not
mistaken, except that it has been much worse than I expected.
It would naturally occur to Mr. Washington, that the secrecy of Jay's
mission to England, where there was already an American Minister,
could not but create some suspicion in the French Government;
especially as the conduct of Morris had been notorious, and the
intimacy of Mr. Washington with Morris was known.
The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world
is a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence.
It is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly
allied to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for
prudence furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served,
as is the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish
the embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for he
authorized it to be made known to the French Government, as a
confidential matter (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a
member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here
state), he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the
purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr.
Jay's mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr.
Jay's authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of
the western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in
American vessels.
Mr. Washington knows that this was untrue; and knowing this, he had
good reason to himself for refusing to furnish the House of
Representatives with copies of the instructions given to Jay, as he
might suspect, among other things, that he should also be called upon
for copies of instructions given to other Ministers, and that, in the
contradiction of instructions, his want of integrity would be
detected. Mr. Washington may now, perhaps, learn, when it is too late
to be of any use to him, that a man will pass better through the world
with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in
one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.
The first account that arrived in Paris of a treaty being negotiated
by Mr. Jay (for nobody suspected any), came in an English newspaper,
which announced that a treaty offensive and defensive had been
concluded between the United States of America and England. This was
immediately denied by every American in Paris as an impossible thing;
and though it was disbelieved by the French, it imprinted a suspicion
that some underhand business was going forward. [It
was the embarrassment into which the affairs and credit of America
were thrown at this instant by the report above alluded to, that made
it necessary to contradict it, and that by every means arising from
opinion or founded upon authority. The Committee of Public Safety,
existing at that time, had agreed to the full! execution, on their
part, of the treaty between America and France notwithstanding some
equivocal conduct on the part of the American Government not very
consistent with the good faith of an ally; but they were not in a
disposition to be imposed upon by a counter-treaty. That Jay had no
instructions beyond the points above stated, or none that could
possibly be construed to extend to the length the British treaty goes,
was a matter believed in America, in England, and in France; and
without going to any other source it followed naturally from the
message of the President to Congress, when he nominated Jay upon that
mission. The secretary of Mr. Jay came to Paris soon after the treaty
with England had been concluded, and brought with him a copy of Mr.
Jay's instructions, which he offered to show to me as a justification
of Jay. I advised him, as a friend, not to show them to anybody, and
did not permit him to show them to me. "Who is it," said I
to him, "that you intend to implicate as censurable by showing
those instructions! Perhaps that implication may fall upon your own
government." Though I did not see the instructions, I could not
be at a loss to understand that the American Administration had been
playing a double game. - Author ]. At length the treaty itself
arrived, and every well-affected American blushed with shame.
It is curious to observe how the appearance of characters will
change, while the root that produces them remains the same. The
Washington faction having waded through the slough of negotiation, and
while it amused France with professions of friendship contrived to
injure her, immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the
swaggering air of a bravado. The party papers of that imbecile
administration were on this occasion filled with paragraphs about
Sovereignty. A poltroon may boast of his sovereign right to let
another kick him, and this is the only kind of sovereignty shown in
the treaty with England. But those daring paragraphs, as Timothy
Pickering (Secretary of State) well knows, were intended for France;
without whose assistance, in men, money, and ships, Mr. Washington
would have cut but a poor figure in the American war. But of his
military talents I shall speak hereafter.
I mean not to enter into any discussion of any article of Jay's
Treaty; I shall speak only upon the whole of it. It is attempted to be
justified on the ground of its not being a violation of any article or
articles of the treaty preexisting with France. But the sovereign
right of explanation does not lie with George Washington and his man
Timothy; France, on her part, has, at least, an equal right: and when
nations dispute, it is not so much about words as about things.
A man, such as the world calls a sharper, and versed as Jay must be
supposed to be in the quibbles of the law, may find a way to enter
into engagements, and make bargains, in such a manner as to cheat some
other party, without that party being able, as the phrase is, to take
the law of him. This often happens in the cabalistical circle of what
is called law. But when this is attempted to be acted on the national
circle of treaties, it is too despicable to be defended, or to be
permitted to exist. Yet this is the trick upon which Jay's Treaty is
founded, so far as it has relation to the treaty preexisting with
France. It is a counter-treaty to that treaty and perverts all the
great articles of that treaty to the injury of France, and makes them
operate as a bounty to England, with whom France is at war.
The Washington Administration shows great desire that the treaty
between France and the United States be preserved. Nobody can doubt
their sincerity upon this matter. There is not a British minister, a
British merchant, or a British agent or sailor in America, that does
not anxiously wish the same thing. The treaty with France serves now
as a passport to supply England with naval stores and other articles
of American produce, while the same articles, when coming to France,
are made contraband or seizable by Jay's Treaty with England. The
treaty with France says that neutral ships make neutral property, and
thereby gives protection to English property on board American ships;
and Jay's Treaty delivers up French property on board American ships
to be seized by the English. It is too paltry to talk of faith, of
national honor, and of the preservation of treaties, while such a
barefaced treachery as this stares the world in the face.
The Washington Administration may save itself the trouble of proving
to the French Government its most faithful intentions of preserving
the treaty with France; for France has now no desire that it should be
preserved. She had nominated an envoy extraordinary to America, to
make Mr. Washington and his Government a present of the treaty, and to
have no more to do with that, or with him. It was at the same time
officially declared to the American Minister at Paris, that the
French Republic had rather have the American Government for an open
enemy than a treacherous friend. This, Sir, together with the
internal distractions caused in America, and the loss of character in
the world, is the eventful crisis, alluded to in the beginning of this
letter, to which your double politics have brought the affairs of your
country. It is time that the eyes of America be opened upon you.
How France would have conducted herself toward America and American
commerce, after all treaty stipulations had ceased, and under the
sense of services rendered and injuries received, I know not. It is,
however, an unpleasant reflection, that in all national quarrels, the
innocent and even the friendly part of the community become involved
with the culpable and the unfriendly; and as the accounts that arrived
from America continued to manifest an invariable attachment in the
general mass of the people to their original ally, in opposition to
the newfangled Washington faction -- the resolutions that had been
taken in France were suspended. It happened also, fortunately enough,
that Gouverneur Morris was not minister at this time.
There is, however, one point that still remains an embryo, and which,
among other things, serves to show the ignorance of Washington
treaty-makers, and their inattention to preexisting treaties, when
they were employing themselves in framing or ratifying the new treaty
with England.
The second article of the treaty of commerce between the United
States and France says:
The most Christian King and the
United States engage mutually, not to grant any particular favor to
other nations in respect of commerce and navigation that shall not
immediately become common to the other party, who shall enjoy the
same favor freely, if the concession was freely ma, oder on allowing
the same compensation if the concession was conditional.
All the concessions, therefore, made to England by Jay's Treaty are,
through the medium of this second article in the preexisting treaty,
made to France, and become ingrafted into the treaty with France, and
can be exercised by her as a matter of right, the same as by England.
Jay's Treaty makes a concession to England, and that unconditionally,
of seizing naval stores in American ships, and condemning them as
contraband. It makes also a concession to England to seize provisions
and other articles in American ships. Other articles are all other
articles, and none but an ignoramus, or something worse, would have
put such a phrase into a treaty. The condition annexed in this case is
that the provisions and other articles so seized are to be paid for at
a price to be agreed upon.
Mr. Washington, as President, ratified this treaty after he knew the
British Government had recommended an indiscriminate seizure of
provisions and all other articles in American ships; and it is now
known that those seizures were made to fit out the expedition going to
Quiberon Bay, and it was known beforehand that they would be made.
The evidence goes also a good way to prove that Jay and Grenville
understood each other upon that subject. Mr. Pinckney (U. S. Minister
to England), when he passed through France on his way to Spain, spoke
of the recommencement of the seizures as a thing that would take
place. The French Government had by some means received information
from London to the same purpose, with the addition that the
recommencement of the seizures would cause no misunderstanding between
the British and American Governments.
Grenville, in defending himself against the opposition in Parliament,
on account of the scarcity of corn, said (see his speech at the
opening of the Parliament that met October 29, I795) that the
supplies for the Quiberon expedition were furnished out of the
American ships, and all the accounts received at that time from
England stated that those seizures were made under the treaty.
After the supplies for the Quiberon expedition had been procured, and
the expected success had failed, the seizures were countermanded; and
had the French seized provision vessels going to England, it is
probable that the Quiberon expedition could not have been attempted.
In one point of view, the treaty with England operates as a loan to
the English Government. It gives permission to that Government to take
American property at sea, to any amount, and pay for it when it suits
her; and besides this, the treaty is in every point of view a
surrender of the rights of American commerce and navigation, and a
refusal to France of the rights of neutrality. The American flag is
not now a neutral flag to France; Jay's Treaty of surrender gives a
monopoly of it to England.
On the contrary, the treaty of commerce between America and France
was formed on the most liberal principles, and calculated to give the
greatest encouragement to the infant commerce of America. France was
neither a carrier nor exporter of naval stores or of provisions. Those
articles belonged wholly to America, and they had all the protection
in that treaty which a treaty could give. But so much has that treaty
been perverted that the liberality of it on the part of France has
served to encourage Jay to form a counter-treaty with England; for he
must have supposed the hands of France tied up by her treaty with
America, when he was making such large concessions in favor of
England.
The injury which Mr. Washington's Administration has done to the
character as well as to the commerce of America is too great to be
repaired by him. Foreign nations will be shy of making treaties with a
government that has given the faithless example of perverting the
liberality of a former treaty to the injury of the party with whom it
was made.
In what a fraudulent light must Mr. Washington's character appear in
the world, when his declarations and his conduct are compared
together! Here follows the letter he wrote to the Committee of Public
Safety, while Jay was negotiating in profound secrecy this treacherous
treaty:
George Washington, President of the United States of
America, to the Representatives of the French people, members of the
Committee of Public Safety of the French Republic, the great and
good friend and ally of the United States.
On the intimation of the wish of the French Republic that a new
Minister should be sent from the United States, I resolved to
manifest my sense of the readiness with which my request was
fulfilled (that of recalling Genet), by immediately fulfilling the
request of your Government (that of recalling Morris).
It was some time before a character could be obtained, worthy of
the high office of expressing the attachment of the United States to
the happiness of our allies, and drawing closer the bonds of our
friendship. I have now made choice of James Monroe, one of our
distinguished citizens, to reside near the French Republic, in
quality of Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America.
He is instructed to bear to you our sincere solicitude for your
welfare, and to cultivate with zeal the cordiality so happily
subsisting between us. From a knowledge of his fidelity,
probity, and good conduct, I have entire confidence that he will
render himself acceptable to you, and give effect to your desire of
preserving and advancing, on all occasions, the interest and
connection of he two nations. I beseech you, therefore, to give
full credence to whatever he shall say to you on the part of the
United States, and most of all, when he shall assure you that
your prosperity is an object of our affection. And I pray God to
have the French Republic in His holy keeping.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
PART
2
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