Star.
London, England, 1811-08-28 00:00:00

• .
votion to France, at the ezpenee tithe honour and
interest of his country.
My information on the subject is to this effect—
that there were three points for which the indepen-
dent patriots of the day strenuously contended.—
First, that our independence should be considered ts
'a given point, and that Great Britain should at the
outset treat with us as independent States ; it being
considered, that to enter on a negociation without
this adntission, would be to descend from the high
and honourable ground of independence to the former
condition of colonies ; and also be the means of pro-
longing the war ; tor the direct object of our alli.
I ance with France being " to maintain effectually the
liberty, sovereignty, and independence, absolute ind
unlimited, of the United States ;" as soon as that
!object should be obtained—in ether words, as soon
las Great Britain should acknowledge and treat with
us as independent—the United States would have no
'reason, on their account, to continue the war.
But France and Spain, which finally became a
party in the war, might have, and in fact had, other
!objects of their own to accomplish, by a continuance
of the war : and therefore the French Court endea-
voured to prevent our insisting upon the admission of
our independence as a preliminary to our commencing
a negociation with Great Britain. Two other points
were in like manner insisted on by the same inde-
pendent patriots—our right to the fisheries, and our
claims to boundaries, which were Westward as far as
the Missisippi ; with the free navigation of that liver.
And a Member of the old Congress had stated to me,
that against these important claims, the French Mi-
nister in Philadelphia remonstrated by memorials to
Congress; that Mr. Madison supported these memo-
rials ; and that, to prevent our negotiations in Paris,
insisting on those three points, the aisgraceful instruc-
tions before quoted were ultimately given; by which
they were ignominiously placed under the direction,
and their country at the mercy of the French Prime
Minister, the Count de Vergennes ; and " That when
the treaty (of peace) admitting and securing those
great points was received, he (Mr. Madison) was the
leader of the opposition in Congress to its being rati-
fied ; because those points were obtained without the
concurrence and against the views of Vergennes.
And that he (Madison) even contended that it should
be sent back to France for the consent of Vergennes,
before the ratification." That there was a zealous
opposition to the ratification of the treaty, on the
grounds above-mentioned, is unquestionable. A vote
of censure against Mr. Adams and Mr. Jay was not
obtained ; but conversing once of this subject, and
mentioning a report made by the then Secretary for
Foreign Affairs (Chancellor Livingston) against the
treaty, on the conduct of the negotiators, Mr. Adams
told me that he actually received a letter of reproof
from the Secretary,' and that it was then among his
letters at Quincy. Why the French Government was
so strenuously opposed to the concessions of the three
points above-mentioned, on the part of Great Britain,
will hereafter be shewn.
The same spirit of devotion, of abject servility to.
wards France, combined with hostility to England,
has since been conspicuous in Mr. Madison. It was
manifested in the virulent opposition given by him and
his associates, (doubtless having Mr. Jefferson as their
guide and head) to the treaty of amity.and commerce
with Great Britain, negociated by Mr. Jay in 1791.
The French Government affected to consider it as
equivalent to a treaty of alliance with Great Britain,
to which the rights and interests of France were Sa-
crificed ; than which nothing was more unfounded
and false. The same spirit is manifested in thewhole
of Mr. Madison's correspondence while Secretary of
State, in " his enlightened and zealous participation"
in Mr. Jefferson's system of measures ; and in his
continuing to pursue them since be succeeded to the
Presidency.
In his answer to the Tammany Society of Bald-,
more, dated May 25,1809, Mr. Jefferson said—" The
hope you express, that my successor will continue in
the same system of measures, is guaranteed, as far
as future circumstances will permit, by his enlighten-
ed and zealous participation in them heretofore, and
by the happy pacification he is now effecting for us."
This happy pacification, as I have heretofore remark-
ed, was the deceitful arrangement with the British
Minister, Mr. Erskine, for settling the affair of the
Chesapeake, and the revocation of the British Orders
in Council. I called it deceitful, because I believed',
that the offensive and insulting clause which, we have
understood, actually prevented its ratification by the
King of Great Britain, was insetted on purpose and
in full expectation that it would produce that effect.
We now find, by the pamphlet of Mr. Robert Smith,
that the offensive clause was, contrary to his ideas of,
propriety, proposed and insisted on by Mr. Madison
himself.
While so ready to use offensive and insulting lan-
guage to the British Government; or, to use the
words of Mr. Smith, to address to it sentiments
4‘ net reconcileable to that dignified decorum which
the courtesy of Governments in their intercourse
with each other ought to observe;" we have now
the evidence of Mr. Smith, that r. Madison for-
bade the sending to General Armstrong even the
moderate animadversions which he had prepared,
upon the most insulting letter that was ever address-
ed by one Government to another—the letter of the
French Minister, the Duke de Cadore, of Feb. 14,
1810, in which, after a train of contemptuous re-
proaches, he characterises those who administer our
Government, as—" men without just political views,
without honour, without energy." To this grossest
of insults Mr. Madison would not hazard expressing
to their Government the slightest resentment or sensi-
bility ; nor make the least complaint of the perfidious
seizure of millions of American property in French
ports—seizures whose atrocity was aggravated by the
groundless pretences and palpable falsehoods by which
the French Minister attempted to justify them. In-
stead of giving scope to. the just resentments which
such a letter could not fail to excite in every indepen-
dent mind, and to the indignant language of a man
feeling for his own honour, and for the dignity and
interests of his countey, which his duty as a Chief
Magistrate imperiously requited him to assert and
maintain—he contented himself with a pitiful evasive
paragraph inserted by his special direction, in a letter
from Mr. Smith to General Armstrong, his Minister
at the French Court. Here it is :—" As the John
Adams is daily expected, and as your farther com-
munications by her will better enable me to adapt to
the actual state of our affairs with the French Go-
vernment, the observations proper so be made rela-