obligations to fulfill their
stipulations and had a perfect right to renounce them. Jefferson took
the correct view that the treaties were with the French nation and that
they were binding under whatever government the French people chose to
set up. This principle, which is now one of the fundamental doctrines
of international law, was so ably expounded by Jefferson that his words
are well worth quoting.

"I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source
of all authority in that nation, as free to transact their common
concerns by any agents they think proper, to change these agents
individually, or the organization of them in form or function whenever
they please: that all the acts done by those agents under the authority
of the nation, are the acts of the nation, are obligatory on them, and
enure to their use, and can in no wise be annulled or affected by any
change in the form of the government, or of the persons administering
it. Consequently the Treaties between the United States and France
were not treaties between the United States and Louis Capet, but
between the two nations of America and France, and the nations
remaining in existence, tho' both of them have since changed their
forms of government, the treaties are not annulled by these changes."

The argument was so heated that Washington was reluctant to press
matters to a definite conclusion. From his subsequent action it
appears that he agreed with Jefferson that the treaties were binding,
but he held that the treaty of alliance was purely defensive and that
we were under no obligation to aid France in an offensive war such as
she was then waging. He accordingly issued his now famous proclamation
of neutrality, April, 1793. Of this proclamation W. E. Hall, a leading
English authority on international law, writing one hundred years
later, said: "The policy of the United States in 1793 constitutes an
epoch in the development of the usages of neutrality. There can be no
doubt that it was intended and believed to give effect to the
obligations then incumbent upon neutrals. But it represented by far
the most advanced existing opinions as to what those obligations were;
and in some points it even went farther than authoritative
international custom has up to the present time advanced. In the main,
however, it is identical with the standard of conduct which is now
adopted by the community of nations." Washington's proclamation lai