sixteenths have been carried there by foreign nations, and even by those whose Governments have forced them into a war with her. They have seen with regret, in this account, that, after having considerably reduced the duty imposed upon your tobacco, that, after having admitted your fish and oil, (which obliged us to keep up premiums on our own establishments for the cod and whale fishery,) we do not enjoy with you any sort of favor for our exportations or importations, and that, after having taken off the duty on the freight by your vessels, you have imposed upon ours a most exorbitant rate of tonnage. The National Convention has been also informed, by this account, that, since the last war, the admission of Americans into the French colonies, has thrown into their hands an immense sum of ready money, which that war had left there, which the French Government sends there for the expenses of its administration, and which is obtained there by the intercourse, direct or indirect, with the Spanish and English colonies. It has been informed, that they have exported all the syrups and molasses, the greatest part of the rum and taflia, and a prodigious quantity of sugar, coffee, and other colony produce, especially since the Revolution has occasioned a neglect of the means of preventing it. France, sir, has seen, without regretting, that a part of these immense productions has contributed to the prosperity of a People, whose struggles for their liberty were seconded by her efforts; but she has also seen with the most poignant grief, that the greatest part of these riches has only served to discharge your engagements with the English, and to enrich her own enemies. She has seen, and sensibly felt, that her ties with your nation have served only to ruin her national commerce, without obtaining the smallest encouragement to her manufactories, and without furnishing the least opening for the superfluous productions of her soil. France, notwithstanding this disastrous picture, is far from intending to withdraw the benefits she has granted you; on the contrary, her wish is to increase them, and her decrees are proofs of it; but she asks of you a just equivalent. She expects the part she yields to you of her riches, far from being carried to a Power as much your enemy as her own, should have its natural effect in improving our mutual connexion. She persuades herself that the extensive opening she offers to all your commodities, should procure one to her manufactures, and to such of her productions as nature has as yet refused to your own soil. She wishes finally that the share which she gives you of her riches of every kind, especially of the riches of her colonies, should furnish objects of exchange, not with your former tyrants, but with your allies, and with your truest friends. Doubtless, sir, France seeks with reluctance, against England, laws of which she condemns the principles; doubtless, her first wish would be to see the English nation, as well as every other, united by a free commerce, a commerce which should have no other rule. or other bounds, than their own activity; but until that nation had freed itself from the fiscal system under which it groans, until it shall have renounced its plan of domincering on all seas, and over all commerce; until she agrees to abandon a system, as impolitic for her, as it is revolting to other nations, France is forced to an opposition equalled to the efforts of a ministry, wishing to monopolize all commerce; she is forced to follow the steps of a system she disclaims, but which the interest of the French nation requires, so long as it shall be the ruling principle of the other Government. It is upon such considerations, sir, that I am charged, as I have already had the honor to inform you, to open with you a new negotiation: the basis of which shall be its candor and its patriotism, the rules of which shall be the real friendship which unites the two People, and the end of which shall be the mutual, and well understood interest of both nations. I promise myself that I shall find the same frankness in the Government of the United States, for this great work, as I am directed to proceed with in it; I promise myself that you will be equally eager to concur in completing a compact which will do honour to humanity, and which, being founded in nature itself, will be rendered imperishable. It would be to me unfortunate, and it would be afflicting to France, if I should fail in this attempt. It would be with the greatest regret that I should find myself compelled to announce to you the second part of my instructions, importing a declaration, in case of refusal, or evading it, of the repeal of the laws dictated by the attachment of the French to the Americans, and by a desire to unite closer the ties which engage them. But I cannot fear an opposition on your part, considering the vast field I am directed to offer to your merchants, considering the life which such a compact would give to your agriculture, to your fisheries, to the improvement of your breed of cattle, to your lumber trade; considering the inexhaustible source of riches which the free commerce of the French colonies offers you, and especially in considering that France asks only in return for these great benefits that you take from her, instead of going to seek them from our common enemy, the clothes, and the wine necessary for your consumption. Confident in this hope, happy in the great objects we are about to accomplish, I wait your pointing out a means of negotiating, which shall bring us, with as little delay as possible, to the establishment of this national compact, which may be soon presented for the ratification of the Representatives of the two People, and the simplicity of which shall equal the grandeur of the end we ought to propose by it. Accept of my respect. No. 142. GENET. Mr. Genet to the Secretary of State. [TRANSLATION.] NEW YORK, November 14, 1793. SIR Having been overwhelmed with business at the moment of my having the honor to transmit you the decree of the National Convention, of the 26th of March last, it was impossible for me to look over the copy I sent, or that of the note with which it was accompanied. I am obliged by your sending back these pieces to me. I have examined and corrected the errors you were struck with, and I hasten to return it to you under the present cover. I have thought proper to add to it the copy of a letter, which I have just written to the Consuls of the Republic, to acquaint them with the new regulations of the National Convention, relative to the commerce with the United States, and of the obligations they impose on them. This decree, Sir, presents to the Americans inestimable advantages. They can, by this law, carry to our colonies cargoes, the production of their fisheries, their provisions, of their agriculture, purchase colonial commodities with the sales of their cargoes, and complete their lading with freights, which are, at this time, offered in abundance, and at a high rate, in all our Islands. I do not think there can be any speculations more lucrative for them. This law, moreover, grants you an advantage which the arret of 1784 had refused you, that of enabling you to import directly into the United States a quantity of sugar and coffee, sufficient for your own consumption. This quantity has been estimated, by the Commercial. Committee of the National Convention, at a fiftieth of the tonnage for the coffee, and at a tenth for the sugar. All these advantages, which there appears a disposition still to increase, if we obtain from the United States a just reciprocity, appear to me highly proper to call for all the attention of the Federal Government to the fate of our colonies. I beg you to lay before the President of the United States, as soon as possible, the decree and the enclosed note, and to obtain from him the earliest decision, either as to the guarantee I have claimed for the fulfilment of for our colonies, or upon the mode of negotiation of the new treaty I was charged to propose to the United States, and which would make of the two nations but one family. Accept my respect. GENET. No. 143. Mr. Genet to the Governor of New York. [TRANSLATION.] NEW YORK, November 23, 1793. 2d Year of the French Republic. SIR: I have received the letter which you did me the honor to write me the 21st instant, as also the copy, annexed to it, of a letter from the Secretary of War. The fresh requisitions which have lately been transmitted to you, respecting the schooner Columbia, formerly called the Carmagnole, are only a continuation of the system which has been observed towards me from the very commencement of my mission, and which, evidently, appears to be calculated to baffle my zeal, to fill me with disgust, and to provoke my country to measures, dictated by a just resentment, which would accomplish the wishes of those whose politics tend only to disunite America from France, the more easily to deliver the former into the power of the English. Warned by this conjecture, which is, unfortunately, but too well founded, instead of proving to you, as I could easily do, that the orders, which have been given to you, are contrary to our treaties; to the conduct of the Federal Government, even towards the British nation, whose Packets, and a great number of merchant vessels. I am well informed, have been permitted to arm, for defence, in their ports; to the bonds of friendship which unite the People of both Republics, and to their mutual interest, since the vessel in question is intended to serve as an advice-boat, in our correspondence with the French Islanis, which, by our treaties, you are bound to guaranty, and in whose fate your property is no less interested than ours, I will give orders to the Consul, and to the French Commodore of the road, to conform themselves to every thing that your wisdom may think proper to direct.. Accept, Sir, &c. GENET. No. 144. Mr. Genet to the Secretary of State, dated New York, November 25th, 1793-2d Year of the Republic. [EXTRACT.] "It is announced to me, from Baltimore, that two hundred colonists are embarking in the Chesapeake for Jeremie.* The Philadelphia counter-revolutionary presses advertise, that two vessels are about taking passengers for the Mole. Thus, Sir, it is no longer the good offices of an ally that France has occasion to claim of the Federal Government; it is not to aid in our destruction that I have to conjure you; it is to entreat you not to conspire in the loss of a colony, which you ought to defend, that my afflicting duty is con ́fined to. With whatever fury they have obstinately persisted to paint me, in libels, which I despise, as an enemy of the American People, and of their Government, and as aspiring to involve you in the war, you know, Sir, with what moderation I have reminded you of the obligations which were imposed on you. In that, also, I have a clear conscience of having been influenced, neither by our successes, nor our misfortunes. I have only ceded to provisory acts, which, concealing a manifest contradiction under an apparent modesty, avow the inability to defend us, and usurp, at the same time, the right to let us be attacked." * In a vessel belonging to Mr. Zachariah Copman. One is the ship Delaware, Captain James Art, fitted out by James Shoemaker. The other is the galliot Betsey-Hannah, Captain Donachan, fitted out by Messrs. Reed and Soder. No. 145. Mr. Genet to the Secretary of State. [TRANSLATION.] 3.} NEW YORK, November 29, 1793. SIR: It is not in my power to order the French vessels, which have received letters of marque in the ports of the United States, in virtue of our treaties, in virtue of the most precise instructions to me, to restore the prizes which they have been authorized to make on our enemies; but I have, long since, prescribed to all our Consuls, neither to oppose, nor allow to be opposed, any resistance to the moral force of the justice of the United States, if it thinks it may interfere in affairs relative to the prizes, or of the Government, if it persists in the system against which I have incessantly made the best founded representations. Neither is it in my power, Sir, to consent that the indemnities, which your Government proposes to have paid to the proprietors of the said prizes, should be placed to the account of France. 1st. Because no indemnity is due but when some damage has been occasioned, in the use of a right which was not possessed; whereas our treaties, and my instructions, prove to me that we were fully authorized to arm in your ports. 20. Because, according to our Constitution, as well as yours, the Executive has not the arbitrary appropriation of the funds of the State; and the Executive Council of France, and their Delegates, could not consent to a reimbursement of the indemnities in question; but when the legislative body shall first have renounced, under its responsibility to the People, the right which I have been expressly instructed to maintain, and afterwards have granted the sums demanded by our enemies, and which have been promised them by the President. Accept my respect. GENET. No. 146. Report to the National Convention upon the Navigation Act, made in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, by B. Barrere. With two Decrees, passed in the session of the 21st September, the 2d year of the French Republic, one and indivisible. Printed by order of the Convention, transmitted to the Departments, and to the Armies, and translated into all languages. CITIZENS: It was on the 21st September, 1792, that the Convention proclaimed the liberty of France, or rather the liberty of Europes |