Jay's Treaty

“ As a member of the greatest commercial nation in the world, and of a company long renowned for their extent of connections and greatness of views, you cannot be ignorant of the rigor of the laws of the duties on imports of a foreign power.
Mr. Jay's treaty, it is true, gave the right of trade with the savages to British subjects in the United States territories, but by no means exempted them from paying the duties, obtaining licenses, and subscribing unto all the rules and restrictions of our laws. ”

“ The two subjects to which Judge Jay's efforts were chiefly devoted were those of war and slavery. His writings on the first, both before and after he became president of the American peace society, had no little influence at home and abroad. In his volume entitled “War and Peace; the Evils of the First, with a Plan for securing the Last” (New York, 1848) , he suggested stipulation by treaty referring international disputes to arbitration, as a plan based upon obvious principles of national policy, and adapted to the existing state of civilized society. ”

“ Not until June did Jay reach England. A treaty was negotiated on November 19, but was not received by Washington until after the adjournment of Congress in March, 1795. The treaty had indeed removed some old grievances: the posts were to be evacuated; commissions were to settle the northeast boundary, and to adjust the claims for the British debts; but Jay got no indemnity for the negroes carried away by the British in 1783. The commercial clauses were far less favorable: the discriminating taxes against American shipping were at last withdrawn ”

“ Jay's treaty with England was laid before the Senate in June, 1795, and after two weeks of fierce discussion was ratified by a very small majority. The Senate, fearing popular criticism, forbade the publication of the treaty, a course which caused such widespread indignation that Mason on his own responsibility gave a perfect copy of the text to the Philadelphia Aurora for publication. The act was as much praised by one party as it was condemned by the other.
[Pg 133]
PARODY [98] On the attempt to force the British Treaty on the People
of the United States
Americans! ”

“ The influence of the slave power having increased so greatly since 1796, as to induce the British Government to change its policy, adopted at the framing of Jay’s Treaty, was now believed competent to compel the Creek Indians to comply with the treaties of New York and Colerain. ”

“ Jay's treaty had no agency in producing it, that disturbing question not having then arisen, and its only effect, in this respect, was during the [399] last year of Washington's administration to increase the majority against the Government to so great an extent as to enable the Republicans to carry Kitchel's resolution condemnatory of the President's own act in refusing to lay before Congress the instructions and papers connected with the negotiation of the treaty, by a vote, including absentees whose sentiments were known, of very nearly two to one. ”

“ Even the Northwestern portion of the land definitely ceded to the United States by Great Britain in Jay's treaty was still left in actual possession of the Indian tribes, while the few whites who lived among them were traders owing allegiance to the British Government. ”

“ Advices from the American minister in London representing that the British cabinet was disposed to settle the differences between the two countries amicably, Washington nominated Mr. Jay to the Senate as Envoy-extraordinary to the court of Great Britain. The nomination, though strenuously opposed by the Democratic party, was confirmed in the Senate by a majority of two to one. The treaty negotiated by Jay was received at the seat of government in March, 1795, soon after the session of Congress closed. The president summoned the Senate to meet in June to ratify it. The treaty was ratified. ”

“ Since the signing of Jay’s Treaty, American shipping had flourished, owing to the fact that being a neutral nation, the United States could convey to France and Spain the produce of their West Indian colonies, the ships of the two European countries not being serviceable on account of the war with Great Britain, whose fleets swept the ocean. ”

“ It was in this treaty that Mr. Jay proposed to insert a clause “that if it should unfortunately happen that Great Britain and the United States should be at war, there shall be no privateers commissioned by them against each other.” Unhappily the clause was considered inadmissible by Lord Grenville, and in fact, although the proposition is embraced in Mr. Jay’s original instructions, the American government have receded from the views they then propounded unless other nations exempt private property from capture at sea. ”

“ In 1794 he tried again his commercial weapons, introducing in the House of Representatives resolutions based on Jefferson’s report on commerce, advising retaliation against Great Britain and discrimination in commercial and navigation laws in favour of France; and he declared that the friends of Jay’s treaty were “a British party systematically aiming at an exclusive connexion with the British government,” and in 1796 strenuously but unsuccessfully opposed the appropriation of money to carry this treaty into effect. ”

“ In the violent debate over Jay's treaty he became its champion, and by a most eloquent speech, before a body that had condemned it, he secured an amendment to their resolution, reversing their former decision, and the passage of one favorable to the policy. Washington offered him a place in his Cabinet, but he refused, as it would interfere with his profession; later he was offered the mission to France, which he also declined. In 1797 President Adams sent another delegation to France, which he accepted, and with Pickney and Gerry proceeded to Paris. ”

“ The United States had to do something, however, to show that the American Republic was not either secretly or openly an ally of the French Republic against the remainder of Europe, and while the Jay Treaty was not what Washington and the American people desired, it was all that England would agree to. As a modus vivendi with our only dangerous neighbor it enabled the American people to devote to domestic development the energies which would otherwise have been expended in war, and to grasp the neutral carrying trade upon which war would have placed an embargo. ”

“ Gallatin prepared, and put before the world, a statement of the facts in the case. This, revised, together with the speech of Mr. Webster, a copy of the Jay treaty, and eight maps, he published at his own expense in 1840.
At this time conflicts on the Maine frontier brought the subject up in a manner not to be ignored. Popular feeling was at high pitch. In this condition of affairs Alexander Baring, who [Pg 350] had been raised to the peerage as Lord Ashburton, was sent to America on a mission of friendship and peace. As a young man he had listened to the debate on Jay's treaty in 1795. ”

“ The "Jay treaty," as it was called, provided for the shameful curtailment of the American ocean-carrying trade, and for the free navigation of the Mississippi for Great Britain. And if the proposed arbitration treaty is not finally rejected by the Senate, the prominence given to the present British Minister at McKinley's inauguration, accidental though it may have been, will serve as a fine prototype of British influence in the administration of our government. ”

“ One faction was willing to be kicked by England; and the other took a pleasure in being souffleté by France. The rival flags were kept flying until the close of the war of 1812.
An outbreak of Democratic fury bordering upon treason took place, when Senator Mason of Virginia violated the oath of secrecy, and sent a copy of Jay's treaty with England to the "Aurora." Meetings passed condemnatory resolutions expressed in no mild language. Jay was "a slave, a traitor, a coward, who had bartered his country's liberties for British gold." Mobs burned Jay in effigy, and pelted Alexander Hamilton. ”

“ As a negotiator he had always gained marked success by acting upon his own principle that "a little good-natured wisdom often does more in politics than much slippery craft." Jay showed fine patriotism in accepting the appointment. He remarked to his friends that no man could frame a treaty with Great Britain without making himself unpopular and odious and he accepted the mission under "a conviction that to refuse it would be to desert my duty for the sake of my ease and domestic concerns and comforts." ”

“ Jay, however, in a letter written to the president of Congress from Spain, had expressed in strong terms his disapproval of such dependence upon France, and, on arriving in Paris, he demanded that Great Britain should treat with his country on an equal footing by first recognizing its independence, although the French minister, Count de Vergennes, contended that an acknowledgment of independence as an effect of the treaty was as much as could reasonably be expected. ”

“ President Washington appointed him Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, an office which he soon resigned. The most noted of all his public services was the negotiation of a treaty with Great Britain in 1794. The terms of this treaty were revolting in the extreme, both to the pride of Americans and to their sense of justice; and Mr. Jay was overwhelmed with the bitterest reproaches from the party opposed to his own. No man, however, has ever been able to show that better terms were attainable ”

“ We cannot give American statesmen the credit for removing the restrictions on our commerce, described above, and so enabling it to expand uncramped. In spite of all their persistence and ingenuity they secured only slight and partial concessions. The treaty with England, negotiated by John Jay in 1794, removed some of our grievances, but proposed to open the West India trade on such humiliating conditions that the offer was indignantly refused. A treaty with Spain gave us merely the right to navigate the lower Mississippi River, without other commercial privileges ”

“ The people and Inhabitants of the Two Countries respectively, shall have liberty, freely and securely, and without hindrance and molestation, to come with their Ships and Cargoes to the Lands, Countries, Cities, Ports Places and Rivers within the Dominions and Territories aforesaid, to enter into the same, to resort there, and to remain and reside there, without any limitation of Time: also to hire and possess, Houses and ware houses for the purposes of their Commerce; and generally the Merchants and Traders on each side, shall enjoy the most complete protection and Security for their Commerce ”

“ In June, 1785, Don Gardoqui was sent by the Spanish [130] government to treat with the American government on any subject of dispute. The Honorable John Jay was commissioned to meet him, but the far-seeing members of Congress fortunately put the following check upon Mr. Jay: "That he enter into no treaty, compact, nor convention whatever with the said representative of Spain, which did not stipulate the right of the United States to the navigation of the Mississippi and boundaries as established by their treaty with Great Britain." ”

“ If the United States could only have time without making undue sacrifice, they could pass beyond the stage when a foreign war with its consequent suffering and debt would endanger our national existence. If they could only have time to grow into a nation, there would be no difficulty in settling all their disputes with other people satisfactorily, either by war or negotiation. But if the national bonds were loosened, then all was lost. It was in this spirit that Washington signed the Jay treaty ”

“ Jay and Pinckney were then negotiating a treaty between Great Britain and the United States, who immediately admitted him to their deliberations. Concerning this treaty, which occasioned, soon after, such unexampled fury of opposition in the United States, Mr. Adams, at the time, thus expressed his opinion: "The treaty is far from being satisfactory to either Mr. Jay or Mr. Pinckney. It is far below the standard which would be advantageous to the country. It is probable, however, the negotiators will consent to it, as it is, in their opinion, preferable to a war. ”

“ So numerous were the infractions of the stipulation prohibiting the carrying off of the Negroes and so fruitless were the discussions resulting from the non-fulfillment of the articles in the treaty that several diplomatic representatives were sent on missions to Great Britain, the last of which ended with the Jay Treaty of 1794. Obviously, no satisfactory settlement as to the Negro could then be reached. ”

“ Jay's instructions, by a vote, which was deemed by him sufficient to confer authority to obtain such an article as he had suggested, but which was clearly unconstitutional. Seven States against five voted to rescind the instructions of August 25, 1785, by which the Secretary had been directed to insist on the right of navigation, and not to conclude or sign any treaty until he had communicated it to Congress. [336] Mr. Jay accordingly agreed with the [318] Spanish Minister on an article which suspended the use of the Mississippi, without relinquishing the right asserted by the United States. ”

“ Britain as the most faithless and corrupt in the world, and denounced the result of Jay's mission as a surrender of every just claim upon a rapacious enemy for restitution on account of great wrongs.
These denunciations had great immediate effect. All acknowledged that the treaty was not as favorable to the United States as the latter had a right to expect; and “public opinion did receive a considerable shock,” says Marshall. Men unaffected by the spirit of faction felt some disappointment on its first appearance ”