e satisfactory." He was not in doubt long,
however. Mr. Jefferson sent him within two or three weeks a series of
papers by Hamilton, under the signature of "Pacificus," in defense of
the proclamation, and urged him to reply. This Madison undertook to do
at once, and in five papers, under the signature of "Helvidius," he
took up all the points in dispute.

The question relating to treaty obligations was the more serious. By the
treaty of 1778 the United States had guaranteed "to his Most Christian
Majesty the present possessions of the Crown of France in America." An
attempt on the part of Great Britain to take any of the French West
India Islands would involve the United States in the war. How, then, Mr.
Madison's friends might well ask, as in the letter just quoted he said
they did, could "the President declare the United States to be neutral
in the unqualified terms used, when we were so notoriously and
unequivocally under eventual engagements to defend the American
possessions of France"? Hamilton's ground was that the treaty, by its
terms, was "a defensive alliance," and therefore not binding in this
case, inasmuch as the present war against England was offensive; and
that, besides, the treaty was in suspension, as France herself was, in a
sense, in suspension, having only a provisional government, the
permanent and legitimate successor to which was uncertain. But an
important point was gained, it was thought, in the decision to receive
Genet as the French minister. Hamilton, still acting in accordance with
that cautious policy which he thought to be, in such a crisis, the most
judicious, questioned whether a minister from the provisional government
in Paris should be recognized without reservations. Such an ambassador
might be followed presently by another accredited by a new power in the
revolutionary progress. This would, at the least, be an awkward dilemma
not to be recovered from without the loss of some dignity by the
government of the United States. But this point also was yielded in
deference to Jefferson, and much to his mortification the concession
turned out to be before he was many weeks older.

"I anxiously wish," Madison wrote to Jefferson, "that the reception of
Genet may testify what I believe to be the real affections of the
people." He was amply gratified. From Charleston, where he landed, to
Philadelphia, Genet was received with the warmest enthusiasm by all who
sympathized with France, and by th