itish Ministry. To cover the agency of Morris
it was given out, I know not by whom, that he went as an agent from
Robert Morris to borrow money in Europe, and the report was permitted
to pass uncontradicted. The event of Morris's negociation was, that Mr.
Hammond was sent Minister from England to America, Pinckney from
America to England, and himself Minister to France. If, while Morris was
Minister in France, he was not a emissary of the British Ministry and
the coalesced powers, he gave strong reasons to suspect him of it. No
one who saw his conduct, and heard his conversation, could doubt his
being in their interest; and had he not got off the time he did, after
his recall, he would have been in arrestation. Some letters of his had
fallen into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, and enquiry was
making after him.
A great bustle had been made by Mr. Washington about the conduct of
Genet in America, while that of his own Minister, Morris, in France, was
infinitely more reproachable. If Genet was imprudent or rash, he was not
treacherous; but Morris was all three. He was the enemy of the French
revolution, in every stage of it. But notwithstanding this conduct
on the part of Morris, and the known profligacy of his character, Mr.
Washington in a letter he wrote to him at the time of recalling him on
the complaint and request of the Committee of Public Safety, assures
him, that though he had complied with that request, he still retained
the same esteem and friendship for him as before. This letter Morris was
foolish enough to tell of; and, as his own char-acter and conduct were
notorious, the telling of it could have but one effect, which was that
of implicating the character of the writer.(1) Morris still loiters
in Europe, chiefly in England; and Mr. Washington is still in
correspondence with him. Mr. Washington ought, therefore, to expect,
especially since his conduct in the affairs of Jay's treaty, that France
must consider Morris and Washington as men of the same description. The
chief difference, however, between the two is, (for in politics there
is none,) that the one is profligate enough to profess an indifference
about _moral_ principles, and the other is prudent enough to conceal the
want of them.
1 Washington wrote to Morris, June 19,1794, "my confidence
in and friendship for you remain undiminished." It was not
"foolish" but sagacious to show this one sentence, without
which Mo
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