was the right of every
nation, and the duty of neutral nations, to prohibit acts of sovereignty
within their limits, injurious to either of the belligerent powers; that
the granting of military commissions within the United States by any
foreign authority was an infringement of their sovereignty, especially
when granted to American citizens as an inducement to act against the
duty which they owed to their country; and that it was expected that the
French privateers would immediately leave the waters of the United
States.

Genet, with impudent pertinacity, denounced these doctrines as contrary
to right, justice, the law of nations, and even the proclamation of
neutrality by the president; and when he was informed that a French
privateer, fitted out in New York, had been seized by a body of militia
acting under the authority of Governor Clinton, he was greatly enraged,
and demanded its immediate "restitution, with damages and interest, and
also the immediate" "restitution, with damages and interest, of the
French prizes arrested and seized at Philadelphia." But the government
was unmoved. The prisoners were not released, nor the vessels restored;
whereupon Genet ventured to declare that he "would appeal from the
president to the people." His only excuse for this rash assertion was
his utter ignorance of the character of the president and people whose
actions, in concerns so momentous, he assumed to control or defy. He
seemed really to have imagined that the love of France and the sentiment
of republicanism were so strong among the people of the United States,
that he would be able to overthrow the government. He had already said,
in a letter to Jefferson, "Every obstruction by the government of the
United States to the arming of French vessels must be an attempt on the
rights of man, upon which repose the independence and laws of the United
States; a violation of the ties which unite France and America; and even
a manifest contradiction of the system of neutrality of the president;
for, in fact, if our merchant-vessels or others are not allowed to arm
themselves, when the French alone are resisting the league of all the
tyrants against the liberty of the people, they will be exposed to
inevitable ruin in going out of the ports of the United States, which is
certainly not the intention of the people of America. This fraternal
voice has resounded from every quarter around me, and their accents are
not equivocal. They are pu