epare
in time some support, in the event of rupture with Spain and England,
we might be charged with a criminal negligence. I was much pleased with
the tone of these observations. It was the very doctrine which had been
my polar star, and I did not need the successes of the republican arms
in France, lately announced to us, to bring me to these sentiments.
For it is to be noted, that on Saturday last, (the 22nd) I received Mr.
Short's letters of October the 9th and 12th, with the Leyden gazettes to
October the 13th, giving us the first news of the retreat of the Duke of
Brunswick, and the capture of Spires and Worms by Custine, and that
of Nice by Anselme. I therefore expressed to the President my cordial
approbation of these ideas; told him, I had meant on that day (as an
opportunity of writing by the British packet would occur immediately) to
take his orders for removing the suspension of payments to France, which
had been imposed by my last letter to Gouverneur Morris, but was meant,
as I supposed, only for the interval between the abolition of the late
constitution by the dethronement of the King, and the meeting of some
other body, invested by the will of the nation with powers to transact
their affairs; that I considered the National Convention, then
assembled, as such a body; and that, therefore, we ought to go on with
the payments to them, or to any government they should establish; that,
however, I had learned last night, that some clause in the bill for
providing reimbursement of the loan made by the bank to the United
States, had given rise to a question before the House of Representatives
yesterday, which might affect these payments; a clause in that bill
proposing, that the money formerly borrowed in Amsterdam, to pay the
French debt, and appropriated by law (1790, August 4th, c. 34. Sec. 2.) to
that purpose, lying dead as was suggested, should be taken to pay the
bank, and the President be authorized to borrow two millions of dollars
more, out of which it should be replaced: and if this should be done,
the removal of our suspension of payments, as I had been about to
propose, would be premature. He expressed his disapprobation of the
clause above mentioned; thought it highly improper in the legislature to
change an appropriation once made, and added, that no one could tell in
what that would end. I concurred, but observed, that on a division of
the House, the ayes for striking out the clause were twenty-seve