trality when France was
actually at war with a great naval power was an immediate and obvious
limitation upon this guarantee. Hamilton argued that while France had
an undoubted right to change her government, the treaty applied to a
totally different state of affairs, and was therefore in suspense. He
also argued that we were not bound in case of offensive war, and that
this war was offensive. Jefferson and Randolph held that the treaties
were as binding and as much in force now as they had ever been; but
they both assented to the proclamation of neutrality. There can be
little question that on the general legal principle Jefferson and
Randolph were right. Hamilton's argument was ingenious and very
fine-spun. But when he made the point about the character of the war
as relieving us from the guarantee, he was unanswerable; and this of
itself was a sufficient ground. He went beyond it in order to make his
reasoning fit existing conditions consistently and throughout, and
then it was that his position became untenable. In reality the French
revolution was showing itself so wholly abnormal and was so rapid in
its changes, that as a matter of practical statesmanship it was
worse than idle even to suppose that previous treaties, made with an
established government, were in force with this ever-shifting thing
which the revolution had brought forth. Still the general doctrine as
to the binding force of treaties remained unaltered, and this conflict
between fact and principle was what constituted the great difficulty
in the way of Washington and Hamilton. The latter met it with one
clever and adroit argument which it was difficult to sustain, and
avoided it with a second, which was narrower, but at the same time
sound and all-sufficient, as to the character of the war. Jefferson
and Randolph stood by the general principle, but abandoned it in
practice under pressure of imperious facts, as men generally do, while
France herself soon removed all technical difficulties by abrogating
by her measures the treaty of commerce, an act which relieved us of
any further obligations and justified Hamilton's position. But in
the beginning this was not known, and yet action was none the less
necessary.

The result was right, and Washington had his way, which it must be
confessed he had fully determined on before his cabinet supplied him
with technical arguments.

All these points must have been plain enough to Hammond and the
English minist