Butler recommended to the company, that the dispute having
probably gone farther than was intended, it ought to be considered as
confined to the company.
Thursday, December the 27th, 1792. I waited on the President on some
current business. After this was over, he observed to me, that he
thought it was time to endeavor to effect a stricter connection with
France, and that Gouverneur Morris should be written to on this subject.
He went into the circumstances of dissatisfaction between Spain and
Great Britain, and us, and observed, there was no nation on whom we
could rely, at all times, but France; and that, if we did not prepare
in time some support, in the event of rupture with Spain and England,
we might be charged with a criminal negligence. I was much pleased with
the tone of these observations. It was the very doctrine which had been
my polar star, and I did not need the successes of the republican arms
in France, lately announced to us, to bring me to these sentiments.
For it is to be noted, that on Saturday last, (the 22nd) I received Mr.
Short's letters of October the 9th and 12th, with the Leyden gazettes to
October the 13th, giving us the first news of the retreat of the Duke of
Brunswick, and the capture of Spires and Worms by Custine, and that
of Nice by Anselme. I therefore expressed to the President my cordial
approbation of these ideas; told him, I had meant on that day (as an
opportunity of writing by the British packet would occur immediately) to
take his orders for removing the suspension of payments to France, which
had been imposed by my last letter to Gouverneur Morris, but was meant,
as I supposed, only for the interval between the abolition of the late
constitution by the dethronement of the King, and the meeting of some
other body, invested by the will of the nation with powers to transact
their affairs; that I considered the National Convention, then
assembled, as such a body; and that, therefore, we ought to go on with
the payments to them, or to any government they should establish; that,
however, I had learned last night, that some clause in the bill for
providing reimbursement of the loan made by the bank to the United
States, had given rise to a question before the House of Representatives
yesterday, which might affect these payments; a clause in that bill
proposing, that the money formerly borrowed in Amsterdam, to pay the
French debt, and appropriated by law (1790, August 4th, c.
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