vate
citizens to arm and equip vessels. This was signed by forty members of
the Pennsylvania legislature. Protests of a similar character were
presented from other parts of the country. On the same day the President
sent in the famous X Y Z dispatches, in confidence. These letters
represented the names of Hottinguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval, the agents
of Talleyrand, the foreign minister of the First Consul, which were
withheld by the President. The mysterious negotiations contained a
distinct demand by Talleyrand of a douceur of 1,200,000 livres to the
French officials as a condition of peace. The effect was immediately to
strengthen the administration, Dayton, the speaker, passing to the ranks
of the Federalists.

On the 18th the Senate sent down a bill authorizing the President to
procure sixteen armed vessels to act as convoys. Gallatin still held
firm. He admitted that from the beginning of the European contest the
belligerent powers had disregarded the law of nations and the
stipulations of treaties, but he still opposed the granting of armed
convoys, which would lead to a collision. Let us not, he said, act on
speculative grounds; if our present situation is better than war, let us
keep it. Better even, he said, suffer the French to go on with their
depredations than to take any step which may lead to war.

Allen of Connecticut read a passage from the dispatches which envenomed
the debate. By it one of the French agents appears to have warned the
American envoys that they were mistaken in supposing that an exposition
of the unreasonable demands of France would unite the people of the
United States. He said, "You should know that the _diplomatic skill_ of
France and the _means_ she possesses in your country are sufficient to
enable her, with the _French party_ in America, to throw the blame which
will attend the rupture of the negotiations on the _Federalists_, as you
term yourselves, but on the _British party_, as France terms you, and
you may assure yourselves this will be done." Allen then charged upon
Gallatin that his language was that of a foreign agent. Gallatin replied
that the representatives of the French Republic in this country had
shown themselves to be the worst diplomatists that had ever been sent to
it, and he asked why the gentlemen who did not come forward with a
declaration of war (though they were willing to go to war without the
declaration) charge their adversaries with meaning to submit to Fr