individuals;” but commercial treaties resemble contracts between individuals of separate interests, and not co-partnerships. A co-partnership implies an union of interests, a participation in profits and losses, in debts and credits. Are any of these understood by a commercial treaty? Assuredly not. In a commercial treaty two nations say: On these terms we will buy and sell, of and to each other. Had you made a treaty with Great Britain to club your merchandise and revenues, and to carry on trade under the firm of Madam Britain and Miss America, such a treaty would, indeed, have resembled a partnership, and would very probably have been attended with all the inconveniences stated by Franklin; but commercial treaties are, I repeat it, among nations what written bargains are among individuals, and the former have exactly the same tendency as the latter, that is, to render mistakes, disputes, and quarrels, less frequent.
But, however, even if treaties do lead to war, it is rather surprising to hear Franklin object to them on that account, when one-third part of his book is taken up with invectives against the President for not forming a treaty with France, the direct object of which was your taking a part with her in the present war. “The treaty proposed by citizen Genet,” says he, “was a treaty on liberal and equitable principles.” What were these liberal principles now? Citizen Genet came forward with an offer to treat, which offer, it must be confessed, contained no express desire of involving you in a war; but what were the citizen’s private instructions concerning this treaty? For it is from these that you are to judge, and not from the contents of a mere complimentary letter. What were they then?
“Citizen Genet,” says the Executive Council, “shall open a negotiation, which may become a national agreement in which two great people shall suspend their commercial and political interest, to befriend the empire of liberty, wherever it can be embraced. Such a pact, which the people of France will support with all the energy that distinguishes them, will quickly contribute to the general emancipation of the New World. But should the American administration adopt a wavering conduct, the executive council charges him, in expectation that the American government will finally determine to make a common cause with us, to take such steps as will appear to him exigencies may require, to serve the cause of liberty and the freedom of the people. The guarantee of our West India islands shall form an essential clause in the new treaty which will be proposed: the executive council, in consequence, recommend to citizen Genet to sound early the disposition of the American government, and to make it a sine qua non of their free commerce to those islands, so essential to the United States.”
Here then are the “liberal principles,” so much boasted of by the partisans of France! A treaty on these principles is what Franklin would have approved of. For not forming a treaty on these principles he loads your President with abuse, while he declares, that his objection to treaties, is “they lead to war, and war is the bane of republican government!” A demagogue, like a liar, should have a good memory.
3rd. To form a treaty of commerce with Great Britain is dangerous, he says, because “it is forming a connection with a monarch, and the introduction of the fashions, forms, and precedents of monarchical governments, has ever accelerated the destruction of republics.” To suppose this man in earnest would be to believe him guided by something below even the imbecility of a frenchified republican. It would be to suppose him almost upon a level with a member from the southward, who gave his vote against a law, merely because it appeared to him to be of monarchical origin, while at the same moment he represented a state, Ref 037 whose declaration of rights says: “The good people are entitled to the common law of England, and the trial by jury, according to the course of that law, and to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their emigration, and which, by experience, have been found applicable to their local and other circumstances, and of such others as have been since made in England, or Great Britain, and have been introduced here, &c.” Can the people who have been so careful in preventing their future rulers from depriving them of the benefit of the laws of England, who look upon the being governed by those laws as the most inestimable of their rights, be afraid of introducing among them the fashions, forms, and precedents of England? Can it be possible, that they are afraid of introducing among them what they already possess, and what they declare they will never part with?
It is not my object to intrude on you my opinion of the fashions, forms and precedents, as Franklin calls them, of the British Government; they may be better or they may be worse than other governments; but be they what they may, they are nearly the same as your own, and they are the only ones ever adopted by any nation on earth to which yours bear the most distant resemblance; therefore, admitting, for a moment, what Franklin says to be true, “that you should make treaties with no nation whose fashions and forms are different from your own,” it follows of course, that, if you ought not on this account to make treaties with Great Britain, you ought to do it with no nation in the world.
But this would not suit the purpose of Franklin, who, at the same time that he reprobates the idea of making a treaty with Great Britain, inculcates the propriety and even necessity of making one with France. “If foreign connections are to be formed,” says he, “they ought to be made with nations whose influence and example would not poison the fountain of liberty, and circulate the deleterious streams to the destruction of the rich harvest of our revolution—tell me your company, and I will tell you who you are.” And then he tells us, that “there is not a nation in Europe, with an established government, whose example should be our imitation, but that France is our natural ally; that she has a government congenial with our own, and that there can be no hazard of introducing from her, principles and practices repugnant to freedom.” Take care what you are about, Mr. Franklin! If there be none of the established governments in Europe congenial to your own, the inevitable conclusion is, that neither you nor your sister republic have an established government! Do you begin to perceive the fatal effects of your want of memory?
But, are you governed by an assembly of ignorant caballing legislators? An assembly of Neros, whose pastime is murder, who have defied the God of Heaven, and, in idea, have snatched the thunder from his hand to hurl it on a crouching people? And do you resemble the republican French? Have you cast off the very semblance of virtue and religion? Do you indeed resemble those men of blood, those profligate infidels, who, uniting the frivolity of the monkey to the ferocity of the tiger, can go dancing to the gallows, or butchering their relations to the air of ah! ca ira? If you do, you have not much to fear from the introduction of the fashions, forms, and precedents of other nations.
Another source of danger, that Franklin has had the sagacity to discover in treating with Great Britain, is, that she “meditates your subjugation, and a treaty will give her a footing amongst you which she had not before, and facilitate her plans.” The executive council of France ordered citizen Genet to tell you something of this sort, in order to induce you to embark in the war for the liberty and happiness of mankind. “In this situation of affairs,” says the executive council, “when the military preparations in Great Britain become every day more serious, we ought to excite, by all possible means, the zeal of the Americans, who are as much interested as ourselves in disconcerting the destructive projects of George III., in which they are probably an object.” I beseech you to pay attention to this passage of the instructions. When military preparations were making against France, she wanted your aid, and so the good citizen was ordered to tell you that you were the object of those preparations. The citizen was ordered to tell you a falsehood; for the war has now continued three years, and George III. has not made the least attempt against your independence.
You have the surest of all guarantees that Great Britain will never attempt any thing against your independence, her interest. I agree with Franklin, that “her interest is the main-spring of all her actions, and that, had not her interest been implicated, the commercial relation between you and her would long since have been destroyed.” Her interest will ever dictate to her to keep up that relation, and certainly making an attempt on your independence is not the way to do that; for, as to her succeeding in such an attempt, I think every American will look on that as impossible. The idea of your “again becoming colonies of Great Britain,” may be excused in Franklin and the other stipendiaries of the French republic; but an American, who holds the good of his country in higher estimation than a bundle of assignats, and who entertains such a disgraceful belief, must have the head of an idiot and the heart of a coward.