There was, however, another nation out on our western and northern border more difficult to deal with than Spain; and in this quarter there was less evasion and delay, but more arrogance and bad temper. It was to England that Washington turned first when he took up the presidency, and it was in her control of the western posts and her influence among the Indian tribes that he saw the greatest dangers to the continental movement of our people. Morris, as we have seen, sounded the British government with but little success. Still they promised to send a minister, and in due time Mr. George Hammond arrived in that capacity, and opened a long and somewhat fruitless correspondence with the Secretary of State on the various matters of difference existing between the two countries. This interchange of letters went on peaceably and somewhat monotonously for many months, and then suddenly became very vivid and animated. This was the effect of the arrival of Genet; and at this point begins the long series of mistakes made by Great Britain in her dealings with the United States.
The principle of the declaration of neutrality could be easily upheld on broad political grounds, but technically its defense was by no means so simple. By the treaty of commerce with France we were bound to admit her privateers and prizes to our ports; and here, as any one could see, and as the sequel amply proved, was a fertile source of dangerous complications. Then by the treaty of alliance we guaranteed to France her West Indian possessions, binding ourselves to aid her in their defense; and a proclamation of neutrality 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.