these opinions, Mr. Madison then concurred. Other questions of justice and expediency, connected with the funding system of Mr. Hamilton, gave rise to warm and acrimonious debates in Congress, and mingling with the sectional divisions of the Union, and with individual attachments to men, gave an impulse and direction to party spirit which has continued to this day, and however modified by changes of times, of circumstances, and of men, can never be wholly extinguished. Too happy should I be, if with a voice speaking from the last to the coming generation of my country, I could effectually urge them to seek, in the temper and moderation of James Madison, that healing balm which assuages the malignity of the deepest seated political disease, redeems to life the rational mind, and restores to health the incorporated union of our country, even from the brain fever of party spirit.

To the sources of dissensions and the conflicts of opinion transmitted from the confederation, or generated by the organization of the new Government, were soon added the confluent streams of the French revolution and its complication of European Wars. There were features in the French revolution closely resemling our own; there were points of national interest in both countries well adapted to harmonize their relations with each other, and a sentiment of gratitude rooted in the hearts of the American People, by the recent remembrance of the benefits derived from the alliance with France, and community of cause against

Britain, engaged all our sympathies in favor of the People of France, subverting their own Monarchy; and when her War, first kindled with Austria and Prussia, spread its flames to Great Britain, the partialities of resentment and hatred, deepening the tide and stimulating the current of more kindly and benevolent affections, became so ardent and impetuous that there was imminent danger of the country's being immediately involved in the War on the side of France—a danger greatly aggravated by the guaranty to France of her Islands in the West Indies. The subject immediately became a cause of deliberation in the Executive Cabinet, and discordant opinions again disclosed themselves between the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury.

On the 18th of April, 1793, President Washington submitted to his Cabinet thirteen questions with regard to the measures to be taken by him in consequence of the revolution which had overthrown the French monarchy; of the new organization of a republic in that country; of the appointment of a minister from that republic to the United States, and of the war. declared by the National Convention of France against Great Britain. The first of these questions was, whether a proclamation should issue to prevent interferences of the citizens of the United States in the War? Whether the proclamation should or should not contain a declaration of neutrality? The second was whether a minister from the republic of France should be received. Upon these two questions the

opinion of the cabinet was unanimous in the affirmative-that a Proclamation of neutrality should issue and that the minister from the French Republic should be received. But upon all the other questions, the opinions of the four heads of the Departments were equally divided. They were indeed questions of difficulty and delicacy equal to their importance. No less than whether, after a revolution in France annihilating the Government with which the treaties of alliance and of commerce had been contracted, the treaties themselves were to be considered binding as between the nations; and particularly whether the stipulation of guaranty to France of her possessions in the West Indies, was binding upon the United States to the extent of imposing upon them the obligation of taking side with France in the War, As the members of the Cabinet disagreed in their opinions upon these questions, and as there was no immediate necessity for deciding them, the further consideration of them was postponed, and they were never afterwards resumed. While these discussions of the Cabinet of Washington were held, the Minister Plenipotentiary from the French republic arrived in this country. He had been appointed by the National Convention of France which had dethroned, and tried, and sentenced to death, and executed Louis the XVIth, abolished the Monarchy, and proclaimed a republic one and indivisible, under the auspices of liberty, equality and fraternity, as thenceforth the Government of France. By all the rest of Europe, they were then considered

as revolted subjects in rebellion against their Sovereign; and were not recognized as constituting an independent Government.

General Hamilton and General Knox were of opinion that the Minister from France should be conditionally received, with the reservation of the question, whether the United States were still bound to fulfill the stipulations of the Treaties. They inclined to the opinion that the Treaties themselves were annulled by the revolution of the Government in France-an opinion to which the example of the Revolutionary Government had given plausibility by declaring some of the Treaties made by the abolished Monarchy, no longer binding upon the nation. Mr. Hamilton thought also, that France had no just claim to the fulfilment of the stipulation of guaranty, because that stipulation, and the whole Treaty of Alliance in which it was contained were professedly, and on the face of them, only defensive, while the War which the French Convention had declared against Great Britain, was on the part of France offensive, the first declaration having been issued by her-that the United States were at all events absolved from the obligation of the guaranty by their inability to perform it, and that under the Constitution of the United States the interpretation of Treaties, and the obligations resulting from them, were within the competency of the Executive Department, at least concurrently with the Legislature. It does not appear that these opinions were debated or contested in the Cabinet. By their unani

mous advice the Proclamation was issued, and Edmund Charles Genet was received as Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republic. Thus the Executive administration did assume and exercise the power of recognising a revolutionary foreign Government as a legitimate Sovereign with whom the ordinary diplomatic relations were to be entertained. But the Proclamation contained no allusion whatever to the Treaties between the United States and France, nor of course to the Article of Guaranty or its obligations.

Whatever doubts may have been entertained by a large portion of the people, of the right of the Executive to acknowledge a new and revolutionary government, not recognized by any other Sovereign State, or of the sound policy of receiving without waiting for the sanction of Congress, a minister from a republic which had commenced her career by putting to death the king whom she had dethroned, and which had rushed into war with almost all the rest of Europe, no manifestation of such doubts was publicly made. A current of popular favor sustained the French Revolution, at that stage of its progress, which nothing could resist, and far from indulging any question of the right of the President to recognize a new revolutionary government, by receiving from it the credentials which none but Sovereigns can grant, the American People would, at that moment, have scarcely endured an instant of hesitation on the part of the President, which should have delayed for an hour the reception of the minister from the Republic