convenient and well understood train of proceeding.
It is the right and duty of the foreign missionary
to urge his own constructions, to support them with
reasons which may convince, and in terms of decency
and respect which may reconcile the government of
the country to a concurrence. It is the duty
of that government to listen to his reasonings with
attention and candor, and to yield to them when just.
But if it shall still appear to them that reason and
right are on their side, it follows of necessity,
that exercising the sovereign powers of the country,
they have a right to proceed on their own constructions
and conclusions as to whatever is to be done within
their limits. The minister then refers the case
to his own government, asks new instructions, and,
in the mean time, acquiesces in the authority of the
country. His government examines his constructions,
abandons them if wrong, insists on them if right, and
the case then becomes a matter of negotiation between
the two nations. Mr. Genet, however, assumes
a new and bolder line of conduct. After deciding
for himself ultimately, and without respect to the
authority of the country, he proceeds to do what even
his sovereign could not authorize, to put himself
within the country on a line with its government, to
act as co-sovereign of the territory; he arms vessels,
levies men, gives commissions of war, independently
of them, and in direct opposition to their orders
and efforts. When the government forbids their
citizens to arm and engage in the war, he undertakes
to arm and engage them. When they forbid vessels
to be fitted in their ports for cruising on nations
with whom they are at peace, he commissions them to
fit and cruise. When they forbid an unceded jurisdiction
to be exercised within their territory by foreign
agents, he undertakes to uphold that exercise, and
to avow it openly. The privateers Citoyen Genet
and Sans Culottes having been fitted out at Charleston
(though without the permission of the government,
yet before it was forbidden) the President only required
they might leave our ports, and did not interfere with
their prizes. Instead, however, of their quitting
our ports, the Sans Culottes remains still, strengthening
and equipping herself, and the Citoyen Genet went
out only to cruise on our coast, and to brave the authority
of the country by returning into port again with her
prizes. Though in the letter of June the 5th,
the final determination of the President was communicated,
that no future armaments in our ports should be permitted,
the Vainqueur de la Bastille was afterwards equipped
and commissioned in Charleston, the Anti-George in
Savannah, the Carmagnole in Delaware, a schooner and
a sloop in Boston, and the Polly or Republican was
attempted to be equipped in New York, and was the subject
of reclamation by Mr. Genet, in a style which certainly
did not look like relinquishing the practice.
The Little Sarah or Little Democrat was armed, equipped,
and manned, in the port of Philadelphia, under the