which became its boast in the next century, we hear that “... before Genet had presented his credentials and been acknowledged by the President, he was invited to a grand republican dinner, ’at which,’ we are told, ’the company united in singing the Marseillaise Hymn.  A deputation of French sailors presented themselves, and were received by the guests with the fraternal embrace.’  The table was decorated with the ‘tree of liberty,’ and a red cap, called the cap of liberty, was placed on the head of the minister, and from his travelled in succession from head to head round the table."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Jay’s Life, I, 30.]

But not all the Americans were delirious enthusiasts.  Hamilton kept his head amid the whirling words which, he said, might “do us much harm and could do France no good.”  In a letter, which deserves to be quoted in spite of its length, he states very clearly the opinions of one of the sanest of Americans.  He writes to a friend: 

It cannot be without danger and inconvenience to our interests, to impress on the nations of Europe an idea that we are actuated by the same spirit which has for some time past fatally misguided the measures of those who conduct the affairs of France, and sullied a cause once glorious, and that might have been triumphant.  The cause of France is compared with that of America during its late revolution.  Would to Heaven that the comparison were just!  Would to Heaven we could discern, in the mirror of French affairs, the same decorum, the same gravity, the same order, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution!  Clouds and darkness would not then rest upon the issue as they now do.  I own I do not like the comparison.  When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the 2nd and 3rd of September, when I observe that a Marat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention, and take a conspicuous part in its measures—­that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been obliged to be abandoned—­when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed—­without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrine of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applause; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched to prostrate and ravish the monuments of religious worship,