we could free ourselves from a compact because we find ourselves injured by it, there would be nothing firm in the contracts of nations. Civil laws may set limits to lezion, & determine the degree capable of producing a nullity of the contract. But sovereigns acknolege no judge. How establish lezion among them? Who will determine the degree sufficient to invalidate a treaty? The happiness & peace of nations require manifestly that their treaties should not depend on a means of nullity so vague & so dangerous.'

Let us hear him again on the general subject of the observance of treaties § 163. It is demonstrated in natural law that he who promises another confers on him a perfect right to require the thing promised, & that, consequently, not to observe a perfect promise, is to violate the right of another; it is as manifest injustice as to plunder any one of their right. All the tranquillity, the happiness & security of mankind rest on justice, on the obligation to respect the rights of others. The respect of others for our rights of domain & property is the security of our actual possessions; the faith of promises is our security for the things which cannot be delivered or executed on the spot. No more security, no more commerce among men, if they think themselves not obliged to preserve faith, to keep their word. This obligation then is as necessary as it is natural & indubitable, among nations who live together in a state of nature, & who acknolege no superior on earth, to maintain order & peace in their society. Nations & their governors then ought to observe inviolably their promises & their treaties. This great truth, altho' too often neglected in practice, is generally acknoleged by all nations: the reproach of perfidy is a bitter affront among sovereigns: now he who does not observe a treaty is assuredly perfidious, since he violates his faith. On the contrary nothing is so glorious to a prince & his nation, as the reputation of inviolable fidelity to his word?' Again § 219. 'Who will doubt that treaties are of the things sacred among nations? They decide matters the most important. They impose rules on the pretensions of sovereigns: they cause the rights of nations to be acknoleged, they assure their most precious interests. Among political bodies, sovereigns, who acknolege no superior on earth, treaties are the only means

of adjusting their different pretensions, of establishing a rule, to know on what to count, on what to depend. But treaties are but vain words if nations do not consider them as respectable engagements, as rules, inviolable for sovereigns, & sacred through the whole earth. § 220. The faith of treaties, that firm & sincere will, that invariable constancy in fulfilling engagements, of which a declaration is made in a treaty, is there holy & sacred, among nations, whose safety & repose it ensures; & if nations will not be wanting to themselves, they will load with infamy whoever violates his faith.'

After evidence so copious & explicit of the respect of this author for the sanctity of treaties, we should hardly have expected that his authority would have been resorted to for a wanton invalidation of them whenever they should become merely useless or disagreeable. We should hardly have expected that, rejecting all the rest of his book, this scrap would have been culled, & made the hook whereon to hang such a chain of immoral consequences. Had the passage accidentally met our eye, we should have imagined it had fallen from the author's pen under some momentary view, not sufficiently developed to found a conjecture what he meant and we may certainly affirm that a fragment like this cannot weigh against the authority of all other writers, against the uniform & systematic doctrine of every work from which it is torn, against the moral feelings & the reason of all honest men. If the terms of the fragment are not misunderstood, they are in full contradiction to all the written & unwritten evidences of morality: if they are misunderstood, they are no longer a foundation for the doctrines which have been built on them.

But even had this doctrine been as true as it is manifestly false, it would have been asked, to whom is it that the treaties with France have become disagreeable? How will it be proved that they are useless?

The conclusion of the sentence suggests a reflection too strong to be suppressed 'for the party may say with truth that it would not have allied itself with this nation, if it had been under the present form of it's government.' The Republic of the U. S. allied itself with France when under a despotic government. She

changes her government, declares it shall be a Republic, prepares a form of Republic extremely free, and in the mean time is governing herself as such, and it is proposed that America shall declare the treaties void because 'it may say with truth that it would not have allied itself with that nation, if it had been under the present form of it's government!' Who is the American who can say with truth that he would not have allied himself to France if she had been a republic? or that a Republic of any form would be as disagreeable as her antient despotism?

Upon the whole I conclude

That the treaties are still binding, notwithstanding the change of government in France: that no part of them, but the clause of guarantee, holds up danger, even at a distance.

And consequently that a liberation from no other part could be proposed in any case: that if that clause may ever bring danger, it is neither extreme, nor imminent, nor even probable: that the authority for renouncing a treaty, when useless or disagreeable, is either misunderstood, or in opposition to itself, to all their writers, & to every moral feeling: that were it not so, these treaties are in fact neither useless nor disagreeable.

That the receiving a Minister from France at this time is an act of no significance with respect to the treaties, amounting neither to an admission nor a denial of them, forasmuch as he comes not under any stipulation in them:

That were it an explicit admission, or were an express declaration of this obligation now to be made, it would not take from us that right which exists at all times of liberating ourselves when an adherence to the treaties would be ruinous or destructive to the society and that the not renouncing the treaties now is so far from being a breach of neutrality, that the doing it would be the breach, by giving just cause of war to France.

TO JAMES MADISON.

J. MSS.

PHILADELPHIA Apr. 28, 1793. DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 12th inst is received and I will duly attend to your commission relative to the ploughs. We have had such constant deluges of rain & bad weather for some time past that I have not yet been able to go to Dr. Logan's to make the enquiries you desire, but I will do it soon. We expect Mr. Genest here within a few days. It seems as if his arrival would furnish occasion for the people to testify their affections without respect to the cold caution of their government. Would you suppose it possible that it should have been seriously proposed to declare our treaties with France void on the authority of an ill understood scrap in Vattel 2. § 192 toutefois et cest argument &c. [illegible] and that it should be necessary to discuss it? Cases are now arising which will embarrass us a little till the line of neutrality be firmly understood by ourselves & the belligerant parties. A French frigate is now bringing here, as we are told, prizes which left this port 2 or 3 days before. Shall we permit her to sell them? The treaty does not say we shall, and it says we shall not permit the like to England? Shall we permit France to fit out privateers here? The treaty does not stipulate that we shall tho' it says we shall not permit the English to do it. I fear that a fair neutrality will prove a disagreeable pill to our friends, tho' necessary to keep out of the calamities of a war. Adieu.

TO THE FRENCH MINISTER.'
(JEAN BAPTISTE TERNANT.)

J. MSS.

PHILADELPHIA April 30, 1793.

SIR,-Your letter of the 13th instant, asking monies to answer the expenses and Salaries of the Consular Offices of France, has been duly laid before the President, and his directions thereon taken.

I have, in consequence, to observe to you that before the new Government of France had time to attend to things on this side

A first draft of this paper was as follows:

"Substance of the Answer proposed to the Letter of the French Minister, of

April 13.

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April 18th, 1793. "Before the new government of France had time to attend to the things on this side of the Atlantic, and to provide a deposit of money for their purposes here, there was a necessity that we, as their friends and debtors, should keep their affairs from suffering, by furnishing money for urgent purposes. This obliged us to take on ourselves to judge of the purpose, because, on the soundness of that, we were to depend for our justification; hence we furnished moneys for their colonies and their agents here-justified, in our own opinion, by the importance and necessity of the case. But that necessity is now at an end. The government has established a deposit of money in the hands of their minister here. We have nothing now to do but furnish the money, for which the order is our direction. We are no longer to look into the purposes to which it is to be applied. Their minister is to be judge of these, and to pay the money to whom and for what he pleases.

"If it be urged that they have appropriated all the money we are advancing to another object; that he is not authorized to divert any of it to any other purpose, and therefore needs a further sum; it may be answered, that it will not lessen the stretch of authority to add an unauthorized payment by us, to an unauthorized application by him; and that it seems fitter that he should exercise a discretion over their appropriations, standing as he does in a place of confidence, authority, and responsibility, than we who are strangers and unamenable to them. Private reasons of weight, which need not be expressed to the minister, that these applications make us, in some sort, a board of auditors for French accounts, and subject our payments to question.

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'That it is known to us, that the present minister, not having the confidence of his government, is replaced by another, and consequently the authority of his application is lessened. That it is rather probable the whole establishment of their consuls here will be suppressed, as useless and expensive to them, and rather vexatious to us."