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There was some conversation about the time when these instructions might be expected; and general Marshall suggested a doubt whether our government might give any instructions. He asked, with some surprise, whether we had not written for instructions? and we answered, that we had not: and Mr. Gerry said that we had stated facts to our government, and conceived that nothing more was necessary. General Pinckney observed, that the government knowing the facts, would do what was proper; and that our applying or not applying for instructions would not alter their conduct. Mr. Talleyrand then inquired whether we had not sent any one to the United States. General Pinckney said no: and Mr. Gerry added, that soon after our arrival we had made propositions to send one of our number, which were not accepted. And general Marshall further added, that those who had communicated with us, had told us we should be ordered out of France immediately; and we had supposed that we should be ordered out before our letters could reach the government. Mr. Gerry then observed, that the government of France must judge for itself; but that it appeared to him, that a treaty on liberal principles, such as those on which the treaty of commerce between the two nations was first established, would be infinitely more advantageous to France than the trifling advantages she could derive from a loan. Such a treaty would produce a friendship and attachment on the part of the United States to France, which would be solid and permanent, and produce benefits far superior to those of a loan, if we had powers to make it. To this observation Mr. Talleyrand made no reply. We parted without any sentiment delivered by the minister on the subject of our going home to consult our govern.

ment.

As we were taking our leave of Mr. Talleyrand, we told him that two of us would return immediately to receive the instructions of our government, if that would be agreeable to the directory: if it was not, we would wait some time, in the expectation of receiving instructions.

MESSAGE

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO CONGRESS. JUNE 18, 1798.

I Now transmit to Congress the despatch, number 8, from our envoys extraordinary to the French Republick, which was received at the Secretary of State's office, on Thursday the fourteenth day of this month.

JOHN ADAMS.

No. 8.

Paris, April 3, 1798.

DEAR SIR,-We herewith transmit you the copy of a letter written to us by the minister of foreign affairs, dated the 28th Ventose, (18th March) and purporting to be an answer to our memorial of the 17th of January.

We also send you in this enclosure a copy of our reply, which has been presented this morning. As soon as we certainly know what steps the French government mean to pursue in consequence of this reply, you shall be informed of them. We remain, &c.

CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY,
J. MARSHALL,

E. GERRY.

Colonel Pickering,

Secretary of the United States.

TRANSLATION.

The Minister of Foreign Relations of the French Republick, to Messrs. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, J. Marshall, and E. Gerry.

THE undersigned minister of foreign relations of the French Republick, has laid before the executive directory, the memorial which the commissioners and envoys extraordinary of the United States of America have transmitted to him, under the date of 28th Nivose last, [17th January, 1798] and it is in execution of the intentions of the directory, which desires to convince the United States

of the true dispositions which animate it with respect to them, that the undersigned communicates to the commissioners and envoys extraordinary the following observations.

The first thing which must excite attention, in the memorial of the commissioners and envoys extraordinary, is the method which they have thought proper to pursue in the exposition and in the discussion of the points which are in dispute between the two states. The executive directory, animated with dispositions the most conciliatory, and penetrated with the interests which should draw the two nations together, as well as eager to concur in the well known wish of the two people, to maintain a perfect intimacy, had reason to expect, that the envoys would have brought, in the name of their government, dispositions entirely similar, and a temper previously prepared by the same views and the same desires. What must be, after this, the surprise of the executive directory, when the undersigned rendered it an account of a memorial, in which the commissioners and envoys extraordinary, reversing the known order of facts, have aimed to pass over, as it were in silence, the just motives of complaint of the French government, and to disguise the true cause of the misunderstanding, which is prolonged between the two republicks! So that it would appear, from that exposition, as partial as unfaithful, that the French Republick has no real grievance to substantiate, no legitimate reparation to demand, whilst the United States should alone have a right to complain, should alone be entitled to claim satisfaction.

The designs, which have induced a preference of this course to every other, have not escaped the executive directory; and it is as well from a just sentiment of the dignity of the Republick, whose interests are confided to it, as to provide eventually against the views, which may be contemplated by such conduct, that it has charged the undersigned to dispel these empty appearances, which indeed cannot exist when facts shall be re-established, and the true intentions of the directory shall be solemnly made to appear, in opposition to those which can be attributed to it only gratuitously, and by taking advantage of its silence.

An incontestable truth, and one which has been entirely passed over in the memorial of the commissioners and envoys extraordinary, is, that the priority of grievances and complaints belonged to the French Republick; that these complaints and these grievances were as real as numerous, long before the United States had the least grounded claim to make, and consequently before all the facts, on which the envoys rest with so many details, had existed.

Another truth, not less incontestable, is, that all the grievances which the commissioners and envoys extraordinary exhibit, with the exceptions, which the undersigned was ready to discuss, are a necessary consequence of the measures which the prior conduct of the United States had justified on the part of the French Republick, and which its treaties with the said United States authorized in certain cases, which it depended upon the general government of the union to create or not to create.

It would be foreign to the purpose to enter into an enumeration of the complaints which the French government had room to make against the federal government, since the commencement of the war, excited against the French Republick, by a power jealous of its prosperity and its regeneration. These details are contained in the numerous official communications, made at Philadelphia by the ministers of the Republick, and have been recapitulated by the predecessor of the undersigned, in a note addressed, under the date of 19th Ventose, in the 4th year [9th March, 1796] to the minister plenipotentiary of the United States. at Paris, and very particularly detailed in the official note of citizen Adet, dated at Philadelphia, on the 25th Brumaire, in the 5th year [15th November, 1796.] Complaint was made in the above note of the inexecution of the treaties concluded in 1778, in the only clauses in which France had stipulated some advantages, in return for the efforts which she engaged to make for the common benefit, and against the insults offered to the dignity of the French Republick.

In fact, from the commencement of the war, the American tribunals have claimed the right to take cognizance of the validity of prizes, carried into the ports of the United States by French cruisers. It has resulted from this pretension, contrary to the letter of the treaty of commerce of

1778, that the property of citizens of the Republick has been unjustly detained, and that French cruising has been totally discouraged in the American seas against an enemy, who revived the most barbarous laws of that mode of warfare, to destroy and insult the American commerce, even under the eyes of the federal government.

*

That government did not confine itself to favour the enemies of the French Republick in a point so essential, a point on which in truth some abuses might arise, but which the French government manifested itself disposed to prevent; it even went so far as to permit enemy's vessels, contrary to the literal meaning of the above treaty, to put into the ports of the United States, after having captured the property or ships belonging to French citizens. Soon afterwards a national corvette, at anchor in the port of Philadelphia, was seized by order of the government, and this arrest was afterwards extended even to her commander. The American tribunals, in like manner, arrested the person of the ex-governour of Guadaloupe, for acts of his administration; and it was necessary that the executive directory should threaten to make reprisals to put this affair in the course prescribed by the law of nations. During the whole space of time which has been just reviewed, the French government made fruitless efforts to induce the government of the United States, to procure for the agents of the Republick, the legal means of carrying into effect the clauses of the consular convention of 1788, which granted to our navigation and commerce, privileges whose principle was consecrated by the treaties of 1778; and nothing could ever be obtained in this respect but fruitless references to the tribunals. In general, all matters, which, with intentions sincerely conciliatory, should have been terminated by means of negotiation, were habitually referred to the judicial authorities; and these, whether they were or were not subject to a secret influence, in the end either deprived the Republick of rights founded upon treaties, or modified their exercise as suited the system of the government.

Such was the true state of things in the month of August, 1795, the period when the ratification of the treaty of amity, navigation and commerce, signed at London in

* Seizure of the Cassius, in August, 1795,

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