Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, the United Netherlands, and Great Britain on the one part and France on the other, the great and wise man who was the Chief Executive, as he was and had been the guardian of our then infant Republic, proclaimed that “the duty and interest of the United States require that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers.”  This attitude of neutrality, it was pretended, was in disregard of the obligations of alliance between the United States and France.  And this, together with the often-renewed complaint that the stipulations of the treaties of 1778 had not been observed and executed by the United States, formed the pretext for the series of outrages upon our Government and its citizens which finally drove us to seek redress and safety by an appeal to force.  The treaties of 1778, so long the subject of French complaints, are now understood to be the foundation upon which are laid these claims of indemnity from the United States for spoliations committed by the French prior to 1800.  The act of our Government which abrogated not only the treaties of 1778, but also the subsequent consular convention of 1788, has already been referred to, and it may be well here to inquire what the course of France was in relation thereto.  By the decrees of 9th of May, 1793, 7th of July, 1796, and 2d of March, 1797, the stipulations which were then and subsequently most important to the United States were rendered wholly inoperative.  The highly injurious effects which these decrees are known to have produced show how vital were the provisions of treaty which they violated, and make manifest the incontrovertible right of the United States to declare, as the consequence of these acts of the other contracting party, the treaties at an end.

The next step in this inquiry is whether the act declaring the treaties null and void was ever repealed, or whether by any other means the treaties were ever revived so as to be either the subject or the source of national obligation.  The war which has been described was terminated by the treaty of Paris of 1800, and to that instrument it is necessary to turn to find how much of preexisting obligations between the two Governments outlived the hostilities in which they had been engaged.  By the second article of the treaty of 1800 it was declared that the ministers plenipotentiary of the two parties not being able to agree respecting the treaties of alliance, amity, and commerce of 1778 and the convention of 1788, nor upon the indemnities mutually due or claimed, the parties will negotiate further on these subjects at a convenient time; and until they shall have agreed upon these points the said treaties and convention shall have no operation.

When the treaty was submitted to the Senate of the United States, the second article was disagreed to and the treaty amended by striking it out and inserting a provision that the convention then made should continue in force eight years from the date of ratification, which convention, thus amended, was accepted by the First Consul of France, with the addition of a note explanatory of his construction of the convention, to the effect that by the retrenchment of the second article the two States renounce the respective pretensions which were the object of the said article.