The principle of the declaration of neutrality could be easily upheld on broad political grounds, but technically its defense was by no means so simple.  By the treaty of commerce with France we were bound to admit her privateers and prizes to our ports; and here, as any one could see, and as the sequel amply proved, was a fertile source of dangerous complications.  Then by the treaty of alliance we guaranteed to France her West Indian possessions, binding ourselves to aid her in their defense; and a proclamation of neutrality when France was actually at war with a great naval power was an immediate and obvious limitation upon this guarantee.  Hamilton argued that while France had an undoubted right to change her government, the treaty applied to a totally different state of affairs, and was therefore in suspense.  He also argued that we were not bound in case of offensive war, and that this war was offensive.  Jefferson and Randolph held that the treaties were as binding and as much in force now as they had ever been; but they both assented to the proclamation of neutrality.  There can be little question that on the general legal principle Jefferson and Randolph were right.  Hamilton’s argument was ingenious and very fine-spun.  But when he made the point about the character of the war as relieving us from the guarantee, he was unanswerable; and this of itself was a sufficient ground.  He went beyond it in order to make his reasoning fit existing conditions consistently and throughout, and then it was that his position became untenable.  In reality the French revolution was showing itself so wholly abnormal and was so rapid in its changes, that as a matter of practical statesmanship it was worse than idle even to suppose that previous treaties, made with an established government, were in force with this ever-shifting thing which the revolution had brought forth.  Still the general doctrine as to the binding force of treaties remained unaltered, and this conflict between fact and principle was what constituted the great difficulty in the way of Washington and Hamilton.  The latter met it with one clever and adroit argument which it was difficult to sustain, and avoided it with a second, which was narrower, but at the same time sound and all-sufficient, as to the character of the war.  Jefferson and Randolph stood by the general principle, but abandoned it in practice under pressure of imperious facts, as men generally do, while France herself soon removed all technical difficulties by abrogating by her measures the treaty of commerce, an act which relieved us of any further obligations and justified Hamilton’s position.  But in the beginning this was not known, and yet action was none the less necessary.

The result was right, and Washington had his way, which it must be confessed he had fully determined on before his cabinet supplied him with technical arguments.