It might be thought that here, at length, we had touched the bottom of humiliation; our lead was brought up covered with mud.  But “in the lowest deep, a lower deep” was to open for us still more profound abysses of disgrace and shame.  However, in we leaped.  We came forward in our own name.  The passport, such a passport and safe-conduct as would be granted to thieves who might come in to betray their accomplices, and no better, was granted to British supplication.  To leave no doubt of its spirit, as soon as the rumor of this act of condescension could get abroad, it was formally announced with an explanation from authority, containing an invective against the ministry of Great Britain, their habitual frauds, their proverbial Punic perfidy.  No such state-paper, as a preliminary to a negotiation for peace, has ever yet appeared.  Very few declarations of war have ever shown so much and so unqualified animosity.  I place it below,[26] as a diplomatic curiosity, and in order to be the better understood in the few remarks I have to make upon a peace which, indeed, defies all description.  “None but itself can be its parallel.”

I pass by all the insolence and contumely of the performance, as it comes from them.  The present question is not, how we are to be affected with it in regard to our dignity.  That is gone.  I shall say no more about it.  Light lie the earth on the ashes of English pride!  I shall only observe upon it politically, and as furnishing a direction for our own conduct in this low business.

The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever the inward sentiments of the parties may be, implies some confidence in their faith, some degree of belief in the professions which are made concerning it.  A temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted.  Otherwise men stumble on the very threshold.  I therefore wish to ask what hope we can have of their good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation, assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have to deal with?  The terms, as against us, must be such as imply a full security against a treacherous conduct,—­that is, such terms as this Directory stated in its first declaration, to place us “in an utter impossibility of executing our wretched projects.”  This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which we have consented to open our treaty.

The second observation I have to make upon it (much connected, undoubtedly, with the first) is, that they have informed you of the result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you, —­that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable effect of their peace.  It forms one of their principal grounds for suspecting our ministers could not be in good earnest in their proposition.  They make no scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what they intend; and this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a proposition for peace!  In old language it would be called a most haughty, offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.