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.
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