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• Foreign Relations ( Continued )
• Cabinet Opinion
• Cabinet Opinion—hamilton and Knox
• Washington to John Jay, Chief-justice, and James Wilson, James Iredell, and William Patterson, Associate-justices, of the Supreme Court of the United States
• Questions Proposed to Be Submitted to the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States
• Washington to the Heads of Departments and the Attorney-general
• No Jacobin 1
• I.
• Ii
• Iii
• Iv
• V
• Instructions to the Collectors of the Customs 2
• Cabinet Opinion.—hamilton to Washington 1
• Notes By Hamilton, to Frame Letter of Secretary of State to Gouverneur Morris, Minister At Paris (cabinet Paper.)
• Cabinet Opinion
• Hamilton to Washington
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Report.
• Americanus (from the American Daily Advertiser .)
• I
• II.
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Points to Be Considered In the Instructions to Mr. Jay, Envoy Extraordinary to Great Britain
• Hamilton to Jay (cabinet Paper.)
• Treaty Project
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Hamilton to Randolph (cabinet Paper.)
• Hamilton to Randolph (cabinet Paper.)
• Remarks On Lord Grenville’s Project of a Commercial Treaty, Made At the Request of E. Randolph, Esq., Secretary of State
• Hamilton to Washington (cabinet Paper.)
• Remarks On the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Made Between the United States and Great Britain
• Supplementary Remarks
• Horatius 1
• Camillus
• No . I
• No . Ii
• No . Iii
• No . Iv
• No . V
• No . Vi
• No . Vii
• No . Viii
• No . Ix
• No . X
• No . Xi
• No . Xii
• No . Xiii
• No . Xiv
• No . Xv
• No . Xvi
• No . Xvii
• No . Xviii
• No . Xix
• No . Xx
• No . Xxi
• No . Xxii
• No . Xxiii 1

horatius1

May, 1795.

To the People of the United States:

Countrymen andFellow-Citizens:—Nothing can be more false or ridiculous, justly considered, than the assertion that great sacrifices of your interests are made in the treaty with Great Britain.

As to the controverted points between the two nations, the treaty provides satisfactorily for the great and essential ones; and only foregoes objects of an inferior and disputable nature, of no real consequence to the permanent welfare of the country. As to trade, the dilemma is this: if an article is added for granting us such privileges in the British West Indies as are satisfactory to us, it will give a duration of TWELVE years to the treaty, and will render it as good a one as the most sanguine could desire, and a better one than any other power of Europe can make with us; for no other power in Europe can give us the advantages in the East Indies which this treaty confers.

If that article be not added, the commercial part of the treaty will expire in TWO years after the present war, by its own limitation.

It is therefore preposterous to talk of great sacrifices in a commercial sense. This observation is to be understood with the exception of the third article; which regulates the trade between us and the neighboring boring British territories, which is permanent, and which is certainly a precious article; inevitably throwing into our lap the greatest part of the fur trade, with the trade of the two Canadas. This is a full answer to the idle tale of sacrifices by the treaty, as the pretext for violating your Constitution, and for sullying your faith and your honor.

It is an unquestionable truth, fellow-citizens, one which it is essential you should understand, that the great and cardinal sin of the treaty in the eyes of its adversaries is, that it puts an end to controversy with Great Britain.

We have a sect of politicians among us, who, influenced by a servile and degrading subserviency to the views of France, have adopted it as a fundamental tenet, that there ought to subsist between us and Great Britain, eternal variance and discord.

What we now see is a part of the same system which led the ministry of Louis XVI. to advise our commissioners for making peace to treat with Great Britain without the acknowledgment of our independence; wishing that the omission of this acknowledgment might perpetuate a jealousy and dread of Great Britain, and occasion a greater necessity for our future dependence on France.

It is a part of the same system which, during our war with Great Britain, produced a resolution of our public councils, without adequate motive or equivalent, to sacrifice the navigation of the Mississippi to Spain; and which also begat a disposition to abandon our claim to any equal participation in the cod fisheries.

It is a part of the same disgraceful system which fettered our commissioners for making peace with the impolitic and humiliating instruction to submit all their motions to the direction of the French Cabinet, and which attempted a censure upon them for breaking through that system, and in consequence of it effecting a peace, glorious and advantageous for this country beyond expectation.

The present rulers of France proclaimed to the world the insidious and unfriendly policy of the former government towards this country. Their successors may hereafter unmask equally insidious and unfriendly views in the present rulers.

But if you are as discerning as I believe you to be, you will not wait for this evidence to form your opinion. You will see in the conduct of the agents of that government, wherever they are, that they are machinating against your independence, peace, and happiness; that not content with a fair competition in your trade, on terms of equal privilege, they are laboring to continue you at variance with Great Britain, in order that you may be dependent on France.

This conduct in the known agents of a foreign government is not to be wondered at. It marks the usual and immemorial policy of all the governments of Europe.

But, that any of your countrymen—that men who have been honored with your suffrages—should be the supple instruments of this crooked policy; that they should stoop to nourish and foster this exotic plant, and should exchange the pure and holy love of their own country for a meretricious foreign amour; that they should be willing to sacrifice your interests to their animosity against one foreign nation and their devotion for another, is justly matter of surprise and indignation. No terms of reprobation are too severe for so faithless and so unworthy a conduct.

Reason, religion, philosophy, policy, disavow the spurious and odious doctrine, that we ought to cherish and cultivate enmity with any nation whatever.

In reference to a nation with whom we have such extensive relations of commerce as with Great Britain—to a power so capable, from her maritime strength, of annoying us—it must be the offspring of treachery or extreme folly. If you consult your true interest your motto cannot fail to be: “Peace and Trade with ALL NATIONS; beyond our present engagements, POLITICAL CONNECTION with NONE.” You ought to spurn from you, as the box of Pandora, the fatal heresy of a close alliance, or in the language of Genet, a true family compact, with France. This would at once make you a mere satellite of France, and entangle you in all the contests, broils, and wars of Europe.

’t is evident that the controversies of Europe must often grow out of causes and interests foreign to this country. Why then should we, by a close political connection with any power of Europe, expose our peace and interest, as a matter of course, to all the shocks with which their mad rivalship and wicked ambition so frequently convulse the earth? ’t were insanity to embrace such a system. The avowed and secret partisans of it merit our contempt for their folly, or our execration for their depravity.

Horatius.

[1]The strongly hostile feeling in regard to the Jay treaty produced immediate agitation against it in all parts of the country. Hamilton, anxious to check the current and divert it at the beginning, published this appeal signed “Horatius.”