of March, 1797, the stipulations
which were then and subsequently most important to the United States
were rendered wholly inoperative. The highly injurious effects which
these decrees are known to have produced show how vital were the
provisions of treaty which they violated, and make manifest the
incontrovertible right of the United States to declare, as the
consequence of these acts of the other contracting party, the treaties
at an end.

The next step in this inquiry is whether the act declaring the treaties
null and void was ever repealed, or whether by any other means the
treaties were ever revived so as to be either the subject or the source
of national obligation. The war which has been described was terminated
by the treaty of Paris of 1800, and to that instrument it is necessary
to turn to find how much of preexisting obligations between the two
Governments outlived the hostilities in which they had been engaged.
By the second article of the treaty of 1800 it was declared that the
ministers plenipotentiary of the two parties not being able to agree
respecting the treaties of alliance, amity, and commerce of 1778 and the
convention of 1788, nor upon the indemnities mutually due or claimed,
the parties will negotiate further on these subjects at a convenient
time; and until they shall have agreed upon these points the said
treaties and convention shall have no operation.

When the treaty was submitted to the Senate of the United States, the
second article was disagreed to and the treaty amended by striking it
out and inserting a provision that the convention then made should
continue in force eight years from the date of ratification, which
convention, thus amended, was accepted by the First Consul of France,
with the addition of a note explanatory of his construction of the
convention, to the effect that by the retrenchment of the second article
the two States renounce the respective pretensions which were the object
of the said article.

It will be perceived by the language of the second article, as
originally framed by the negotiators, that they had found themselves
unable to adjust the controversies on which years of diplomacy and of
hostilities had been expended, and that they were at last compelled to
postpone the discussion of those questions to that most indefinite
period, a "convenient time." All, then, of these subjects which was
revived by the convention was the right to renew, when it should be
c