The Jay treaty and its ratification had, however, other results than mere domestic conflicts.  Spain, acting under French influence, threatened to rescind the Pinckney treaty which had just been made so advantageously to the United States; but, like most Spanish performances at that time, these threats evaporated in words, and the Mississippi remained open.  With France, however, the case was very different.  Our demand for the recall of Genet had been met by a counter-demand for the recall of Morris, to which, of course, we were obliged to accede, and the question as to the latter’s successor was a difficult and important one.  Washington himself had been perfectly satisfied with the conduct of Morris, but he was also aware that the known dislike of that brilliant diplomatist to the revolutionary methods then dominant in Paris had seriously complicated our relations with France.  He wished by all fair means to keep France in good humor, and he therefore determined that Morris’s successor should be a man whose friendship toward the French republic was well known.  His first choice was Madison, which would have answered admirably, for Madison was preeminently a safe man.  Very unluckily, however, Madison either could not or would not go, and the President’s final choice was by no means equally good.

It was, of course, most desirable that the new minister should be persona grata to the republic, but it was vastly more important that he should be in cordial sympathy with the administration at home, for no administration ought ever to select for a foreign mission, especially at a critical moment, any one outside the ranks of its own supporters.  This was the mistake which Washington, from the best of motives, now committed by appointing James Monroe to be minister to France.  It is one of the puzzles of our history to reconcile the respectable and common-place gentleman, who for two terms as President of the United States had less opposition than ever fell to the lot of any other man in that office, with the violent, unscrupulous, and extremely light-headed politician who figured as senator from Virginia and minister to France at the close of the last century.  Monroe at the time of his appointment had distinguished himself chiefly by his extreme opposition to the administration, and by his intrigues against Hamilton, which were so dishonestly conducted that they ultimately compelled the publication of the “Reynolds Pamphlet,” a sore trial to its author, and a lasting blot on the fame of the enemy who made the publication necessary.  From such a man loyalty to the President who appointed him was hardly to be expected.  But there was no reason to suppose that he would lose his head, and forget that he was an American, and not a French citizen.