The Writings Of Thomas Paine Volume III Part 23

"Of the sense which the President has always entertained of your merits, and of his friendly disposition towards you, you are too well a.s.sured 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 endeavours, and as soon as possible. But you must, until that event shall be accomplished, bear your situation with patience and fort.i.tude. You will likewise have the justice to recollect, that I am placed here upon a difficult theatre*

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. Was.h.i.+ngton,) is put in soft language. Mr. Monroe knew what Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton had said formerly, and he was willing to keep that in view.

But the fact is, not only that Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton had given no orders to Mr.

Monroe, as the letter [of Whiteside] stated, but he did not so much as say to him, enquire if Mr. Paine be dead or alive, in prison or out, or see if there be any a.s.sistance we can give him.

This I presume alludes to the embarra.s.sments which the strange conduct of Gouverneur Morris had occasioned, and which, I well know, had created suspicions of the sincerity of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton.--_Author_. voi. m--ij

While these matters were pa.s.sing, 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 circ.u.mstances I wrote again to Mr. Monroe, and found occasion, among other things, to say: "It will not add to the popularity of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 any thing 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 mean time 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 4th 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 friends.h.i.+p, as an open-hearted man will always do in such a case, with respect and grat.i.tude.

Soon after my liberation, the Convention pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tution 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 shew, 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 unfavourable opinion of Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton; 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 1790, or about that time, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 pa.s.s uncontradicted. The event of Morris's negociation 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 a 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 enquiry was making after him.

A great bustle had been made by Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton 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.

Was.h.i.+ngton in a letter he wrote to him at the time of recalling him on the complaint and request of the Committee of Public Safety, a.s.sures him, that though he had complied with that request, he still retained the same esteem and friends.h.i.+p for him as before. This letter Morris was foolish enough to tell of; and, as his own char-acter and conduct were notorious, the telling of it could have but one effect, which was that of implicating the character of the writer.(1) Morris still loiters in Europe, chiefly in England; and Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton is still in correspondence with him. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton ought, therefore, to expect, especially since his conduct in the affairs of Jay's treaty, that France must consider Morris and Was.h.i.+ngton 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.

1 Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to Morris, June 19,1794, "my confidence in and friends.h.i.+p for you remain undiminished." It was not "foolish" but sagacious to show this one sentence, without which Morris might not have escaped out of France. The letter reveals Was.h.i.+ngton's mental decline. He says "until then [Fauchet's demand for recall of Morris, early 1794] I had supposed you stood well with the powers that were."

Lafayette had pleaded for Morris's removal, and two French Ministers before Fauchet, Ternant and Genet, had expressed their Government's dissatisfaction with him. See Ford's Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton, vii., p. 453; also Editor's Introduction to XXI.--_Editor._

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.

Every thing was of a-piece. Every thing was mean. The same kind of character went to all circ.u.mstances public or private. Disgusted at this national degradation, as well as at the particular conduct of Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton to me, I wrote to him (Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton) on the 22d of February (1795) under cover to the then Secretary of State, (Mr. Randolph,) and entrusted the letter to Mr. Le-tombe, 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 shewed it to him. He expressed a wish that I would recall it, which he supposed might be done, as he had learnt 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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. Was.h.i.+ngton, which I sent under cover to Mr. Benj. Franklin Bache of Philadelphia. The letter is as follows:

"Paris, September 20th, 1795.

"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, 1795; 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 inc.u.mbent on you to have made some enquiry 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 hand-writing 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 enquiring 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 otherwise. 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."

1 Was.h.i.+ngton Papers in State Department. Endorsed by Bache: "Jan. 18, 1796. Enclosed to Benj. Franklin Bache, and by him forwarded immediately upon receipt."--_Editor._.

Here follows the letter above alluded to, which I had stopped in complaisance to Mr. Monroe.

"Paris, February aad, 1795.

"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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sured that I could not have deserved imprisonment in France; and, without knowing any thing 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 enquiry 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 a.s.sistance you could render. Is this what I ought to have expected from America, after the part I had acted towards her, or will it redound to her honour 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 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 every thing 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 every thing 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 pretence was, that I was a foreigner,) and those that have been silent and inactive towards me in America, appear to me to have acted from the same motive. It is impossible for me to discover any other.(1)

"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 voluptousness, 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.

1 This paragraph of the original letter was omitted from the American pamphlet, probably by the prudence of Mr. Bache.-- _Editor._

2 "I have just heard of Gouverneur Morris's appointment. It is a most unfortunate one; and, as I shall mention the same thing to him when I see him, I do not express it to you with the injunction of confidence."--Paine to Jefferson, Feb.

13,1792.--_Editor._

3 Paine could not of course know that Morris was willing that the Americans, to whom he alludes, captains of captured vessels, should suffer, in order that there might be a case against France of violation of treaty, which would leave the United States free to transfer the alliance to England. See Introduction to XXI.. also my "Life of Paine," ii., p.

83.--_Editor._.

"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 Amer-ica, and to free her from the 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 Pet.i.tions 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 pet.i.tion in his pocket, and gone home. The case happened to be otherwise, and he has sacrificed the honour and perhaps all the advantages of it, by turning pet.i.tioner. 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, tho' 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 condemnation, 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 pet.i.tion 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 magnanimity 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 proclamation of neutrality. This has always appeared to me as an a.s.sumption on the part of the executive not warranted by the Const.i.tution. But pa.s.sing 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 farther insults and depredations, but was an informal breach of neutrality towards France, by pa.s.sively contributing to the aid of her enemy. That the government of England considered the American government as pusillanimous, is evident from the encreasing insolence of the conduct of the former towards 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.(1) 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 towards me, during my imprisonment, has not in some measure arisen from that policy.

1 Wayne's success against the Indians of the Six Nations, 1794, was regarded by Was.h.i.+ngton also as a check on England.

Writing to Pendleton, Jan. 22, 1795, he says: "There is reason to believe that the Indians...._together with their abettors_; begin to see things in a different point of view." (Italics mine).--_Editor._

"Tho' I have written you this letter, you ought not to suppose it has been an agreeable undertaking to me. On the contrary, I a.s.sure 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 friends.h.i.+p with pleasure, I suffer a loss by your depriving me of that sentiment.

"Thomas Paine."