f) ability to maintain the independence she had so reluctantly Confessed. While John Jay opened negotiations with Great Britain, at London, James Monroe, at Paris, assured the French Directory that Mr. Jay;s object was to obtain cofnpensation for spoliations, with an immediate restitution of the Western posts; and that he was positively forbidden from weakening the engagements, existing between the United States and France. These assurances were effectual. Early in 1795 the French Directory decreed that the Treaty of Amity and Commerce should thenceforth be strictly •observed, and provided for indemnifying those who had suffered by the embargo at Bordeaux ; and Mr. Monroe began a dispatch with announcing that a satisfactory arrangement of the claims for spoliations was at hand. But he closed the communication with a statement, that the ground thus happily gained had been suddenly lost, by reason of rumored stipulations injurious to France in the British treaty just then signed at London. A cloud, of political mystery gathered upon this compact from the day of its execution, the 19th of November, 1794, until it was finally promulgated on the 9th of May, 1796. France complained of this concealment as disingenuous ; and she ever afterwards maintained that the United States had not merely violated their engagements with her, but had even abandoned, ■also, their professed neutrality, by relinquishing the principle that free ships made free goods, and by giving to England a too favorable standard of contraband. She therefore pursued her depredations more recklessly than beforehand with the avowed purpose of compelling the United States to break their new engagements with Great Britain, her ancient and most inveterate enemy. Mr. Monroe was replaced by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, but France now refused to receive or recognise a Minister. A new and august commission was constituted, consisting of Mr. Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, who, after enduring many insults and baffling many intrigues, returned to the United States. The United States, apprehending war with not only France, but Great Britain also, laid the foundations of their present systems of military and naval defence ; and the controversy with the former Power ripened into resistance, reprisal, and retaliation. After two years had thus passed, and the French Directory had consented to negotiate, Oliver Ellsworth, William R. Davie, and William Vans Murray, proceeded to Paris as ambassadors. They found France just entering the fourth act of the drama of her Revolution, the Consulate of the youthful Conqueror of Italy. The American ministers demanded indemnities for the spoliations, as a sine qua non. The French ministers, at whose head was Joseph Bonaparte, readily yielded this condition, but insisted at the samfe time on a recognition and renewal of the ancient treaties, with national damages for the violation of them, as a sine qua non on their part. The Americans, declining in every case to continue the ancient treaties, proposed to, purchase exemption from their most embarrassing stipulations. They offered ten millions of francs for a release from the article of guaranty, and three millions of francs for a reduction of the privileges granted to France by the 17th article of the Treaty of Commerce, to such as were ■allowed by the United States to the most favored nation. France rejected all such overtures, and the commissioners, respectively receding from their extreme demands, concluded an accommodation by which the United 'States received compensation for the plunder of vessels not yet condemned, together with payment of the claims founded upon contracts, and also a satisfactory designation of articles contraband of war. The claims for spoliations in cases where condemnation had already passed, the original sine qua non on our part, together with the reciprocal claims of
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