RELATIONS WITH FRANCE. 325 XIV. 1799. whose policy might more conform to theirs, and of act- CHAPTER ing, meanwhile, as far as might be, as a clog upon those measures which they did not approve; while Adams, on his part, hesitated to widen the already alarming breach in the Federal party by actually turning them out of office. The objections on the part of Pickering, Wolcott, and M'Henry, to a renewal of diplomatic relations with France -objections in which Hamilton and a large number of the more zealous Federalists concurred-were ostensibly based upon doubts as to the sincerity of the French government; the impossibility of relying with confidence upon any stipulations made by Talleyrand; and the idea that the honor of the country did not allow any further advances on our part, while the piratical French de crees against American commerce remained unrepealed. Washington himself was strongly disposed to this view, though, with his usual candor and caution, he declined to express a definitive opinion as to a matter the whole of which did not lie before him. But, while such were the objections openly urged, what, no doubt, had quite as much real weight, whether the parties so influenced were perfectly conscious of it or not, was the effect which the resumption of negotiations might have and would be likely to have on the domestic politics of the country. The manly resistance made by the Federalists to the insults and aggressions of France seemed to give them a hold upon the public mind such as they had never possessed before. The self-styled Republican party, having come forward as advocates of submission, had withered and wasted under the meridian blaze of an excited patriotism; and, as a means of keeping up that feeling, and raising it to a still higher pitch, many of the more ardent CHAPTER Federalists were ready and anxious for open war; espe XIV. cially now that the declining fortune of the French re1799. public made her much less formidable as an adversary than she had seemed to be a year or two before. The late wrongs and insults of the French rankled deeply in ardent bosoms. A large part of the more intelligent and better-educated people-and of such the Federal party was composed-had lost all that attachment for France which, cotemporaneously with the French alliance, had sprung so suddenly into existence, and which the early progress of the French Revolution had raised to a high pitch of enthusiasm. That shortlived attachment was now, on their part, replaced by a feeling compounded of old traditional prejudices against the French, and of that horror, dread, and detestation which the atrocities of the Revolution, the overbearing insolence of the Republic, and, in particular, the aboli tion of the Christian worship, had combined to excite. It began to be argued, and with a good deal of plausi bility, that the French alliance had never been of any advantage to America; that, so far from having secured our independence, as the French and their partisans al leged, it had, by arousing in Great Britain a bitter spirit of national jealousy, operated to protract a contest which, but for the interference of France, would have been much sooner ended, and without leaving behind it such deep traces of anger and hate. France, so it was argued, had originally espoused our cause, not from any love to us, but from desire to injure Great Britain. Proofs of her selfishness in this respect, derived from the French archives, had been brought over by Genet, and had been made public with the very view of showing that Amer ica owed no debt of gratitude to the fallen monarchy. These documents had served to give new strength to the RELATIONS WITH FRANCE. 327 XIV. old suspicions that, in the negotiation of the treaty of CHAPTER peace, France had played us false in the matter of the fisheries and the Western boundary; and it was even 1799. endeavored to reflect back the recent insolence and bad faith of Talleyrand and the Directory upon Vergennes and Louis XVI., who seem (however some might have thought otherwise) to have always conducted toward the United States with candor and generosity. In the same spirit an attempt was made to trace back that French influence, so conspicuous in the United States within the last few years, to a still earlier period. The journals of the old confederation were quoted to show that the instructions, to submit themselves in all things to the direction of France, given to the American commissioners for negotiating peace, had been carried against New England by the votes of Virginia and the South. Subserviency to France, which it was thus attempted to fix upon Virginia even at that early day, lay at the bottom, so it was argued, of the whole opposition to the Federal government, and to counteract and destroy it nothing would so effectually serve as war with the French republic; or, if the people could not be brought to that, a continuance in the existing position of commercial non-intercourse and resistance to aggressions. This, as must be evident at a single glance, was a very different position from that occupied by Adams and the Federal party at the commencement of his administration. It was going quite as far against France, and for very similar reasons too, as the opposition had been inclined to go against England; a complete abandonment of that system of neutrality which Washington had proclaimed, and upon which Adams had insisted, as at once the right and the true policy of America. Because a portion of the Federalists had changed their views, was XIV. CHAPTER Adams obliged to change with them? Was he, as & party political expedient, to assume the terrible respon 1799 sibility of plunging the nation into all the sufferings, expenses, and dangers of a war? Even as a party expedient, was the policy of protracting the dispute with France so certain? All the considerations already suggested as motives for the nomination of Murray would weigh equally strong in favor of proceeding with the mission. How little to be relied upon the recent outbursts of Federal feeling really were, was apparent in the result of the Pennsylvania election, just concluded, in which M'Kean had been elected governor by twentyeight thousand votes to twenty-three thousand for Ross, the Federal candidate. Nor did there seem any great force in the reasons urged for delaying the mission. The harder pressed the Directory were, the more likely they would be to treat. And even in case the Republic should fall, there would be no harm, as Adams suggested, to have envoys present on the spot to welcome the restoration of the ancient monarchy. So fluctuating were the chances of war, that before the envoys reached France, the fortunes of the Republic had begun again to ascend; and had negotiation been unprovided for, the speedy European peace that followed would have left America to fight alone; or, that being out of the question, as it would have been, to accept such terms as France might choose to dictate. The wisdom of the mission thus justified, as well on general considerations as by the actual result, it will not take long to dispose of the imputations against its author, freely thrown out at the time, and since so often reiterated. The principal of these imputations are, jealousy of Hamilton, to whom a war would be likely to bring great addition of influence and reputation, and the JUSTIFICATION OF THE PRESIDENT. 329 XIV. hope, by appeasing the hostility of the opposition, to se- CHAPTER cure his own re-election. Give to these inotives all the force which, under the circumstances, they can be pre- 1799. sumed to have had-and that Adams was quite accessi ble to such motives is not to be denied yet they prompted to no sacrifice of the country's interest or honor; at the most, they only tended to confirm a resolution wise and good in itself. Making due allowance, then, for the natural infirmities of humanity-the more necessary in the case of a man like Adams, the ungovernable vehemence and incautiousness of whose temper, a most striking contrast to Jefferson's, made his weaknesses but too patent to the world-and in spite of the somewhat misplaced sneers of Jefferson and others, who profited by his fall; in spite of what he himself felt infinitely more, the anger and obloquy of many of his former political supporters-an obloquy which clouded the long remainder of his life, souring his temper, embittering his heart, and making him, as to certain persons, excessively unjust-it is yet impossible to discover, in the institution of this second mission to France, anything to conflict with that character for honesty and independence which Franklin and Jefferson, neither of them partial judges, had united to bestow upon Adams; and in which the general voice of his country, including even his political opponents, had, down to this moment, almost unani mously concurred. Nor will a due sense of historical justice allow us to stop here. Whatever, on this memorable occasion, might have been the mixture of personal motives in Adams's conduct, no reason appears to esteem it so grea as materially to detract from the merits of an action of the highest and noblest class which it ever falls to the lot of statesmen to perform; that of boldly risking their own |