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GOUVERNEUR MORRIS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

CHAPTER 9

 mission to england: return to paris

in March, 1790, Morris went to London, in obedience to a letter received from Washington appointing him private agent to the British government, and inclosing him the proper credentials.

Certain of the conditions of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, although entered into seven years before, were still unfulfilled. It had been stipulated that the British should give up the fortified frontier posts within our territory, and should pay for the negroes they had taken away from the Southern States during the war. They had done neither, and Morris was charged to find out what the intentions of the government were in the matter. He was also to find out whether there was a disposition to enter into a commercial treaty with the United States ; and finally, he was to sound them as to their sending a minister to America.

On our part we had also failed to fulfill a portion of our treaty obligations, not having complied with the article which provided for the payment of debts due before the war to British merchants. Both sides had been to blame; each, of course blamed only the other. But now, when we were ready to perform our part, the British refused to perform theirs.

As a consequence, Morris, although he spent most of the year in London, failed to accomplish anything. The feeling in England was hostile to America; to the king, in particular, the very name was hateful. The English were still sore over their defeat, and hated us because we had been victors; and yet they despised us also, for they thought we should be absolutely powerless except when we were acting merely on the defensive. From the days of the Revolution till the days of the civil war, the ruling classes of England were bitterly antagonistic to our nation ; they always saw with glee any check to our national well-being; they wished us ill, and exulted in our misfortunes, while they sneered at our successes. The results have been lasting, and now work much more to their hurt than to ours. The past conduct of England certainly offers much excuse for, though it cannot in the least justify, the unreasonable and virulent anti-English feeling — that is, the feeling against Englishmen politically and nationally, not socially or individually — which is so strong in many parts of our country where the native American blood is purest.

The English ministry in 1790 probably had the general feeling of the nation behind them in their determination to injure us as much as they could ; at any rate, their aim seemed to be, as far as lay in them, to embitter our already existing hostility to their empire. They not only refused to grant us any substantial justice, but they were inclined to inflict on us and on our representatives those petty insults which rankle longer than injuries.

When it came to this point, however, Morris was quite able to hold his own. He had a ready, biting tongue; and, excepting Pitt and Fox, was intellectually superior to any of the public men whom he met. In social position, even as they understood it, he was their equal; they could hardly look down on the brother of a British major-general, and a brother-in-law of the Duchess of Gordon. He was a man of rather fiery courage, and any attacks upon his country were not likely to be made twice in his presence. Besides, he never found the English congenial as friends or companions ; he could not sympathize, or indeed get along well, with them. This distaste for their society he always retained, and though he afterwards grew to respect them, and to be their warm partisan politically, he was at this time much more friendly to France, and was even helping the French ministers concoct a scheme of warfare against their neighbor. To his bright, impatient temperament, the English awkwardness seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to bringing people together " as in other countries." He satirized the English drawing-rooms, " where the arrangement of the company was stiff and formal, the ladies all ranged in battalia on one side of the room ;" and remarked " that the French, having no liberty in their government, have compensated to themselves that misfortune by bestowing a great deal upon society. But that, I fear, in England, is all confined to the House of Commons." Years afterwards he wrote to a friend abroad : " Have you reflected that there is more of real society in one week at [a continental watering-place] than in a London year ? Recollect that a tedious morning, a great dinner, a boozy afternoon, and dull evening make the sum total of English life. It is admirable for young men who shoot, hunt, drink, — but for us ! How are we to dispose of ourselves ? No. Were I to give you a rendezvous in Europe, it should be on the Continent. I respect, as you know, the English nation highly, and love many individuals among them, but I do not love their manners." Times have changed, and the manners of the islanders with them. Exactly as the " rude Carin-thian boor " has become the most polished of mortals, so, after a like transformation, English society is now perhaps the pleasantest and most interesting in Europe. Were Morris alive to-day, he would probably respect the English as much as he ever did, and like them a good deal more ; and, while he might well have his preference for his own country confirmed, yet, if he had to go abroad, it is hard to believe that he would now pass by London in favor of any continental capital or watering-place.

In acknowledging Washington's letter of appointment, Morris wrote that he did not expect much difficulty, save from the king himself, who was very obstinate, and bore a personal dislike to his former subjects. But his interviews with the minister of foreign affairs, the Duke of Leeds, soon undeceived him. The duke met him with all the little tricks of delay and evasion known to old-fashioned diplomacy ; tricks that are always greatly relished by men of moderate ability, and which are successful enough where the game is not very important, as in the present instance, but are nearly useless when the stakes are high and the adversary determined. The worthy nobleman was profuse in expressions of general good-will, and vague to a degree in his answers to every concrete question; affected to misunderstand what was asked of him, and, when he could not do this, " slumbered profoundly " for weeks before making his reply. Morris wrote that " his explanatory comments were more unintelligible than his texts," and was delighted when he heard that he might be replaced by Lord Hawks-bury ; for the latter, although strongly anti-American, " would at least be an efficient minister," whereas the former was " evidently afraid of committing himself by saying or doing anything positive." He soon concluded that Great Britain was so uncertain as to how matters were going in Europe that she wished to keep us in a similar state of suspense. She had recovered with marvelous rapidity from the effects of the great war; she was felt on all sides to hold a position of commanding power; this she knew well, and so felt like driving a very hard bargain with any nation, especially with a weak one that she hated. It was particularly difficult to form a commercial treaty. There were very many Englishmen who agreed with a Mr. Irwin, " a mighty sour sort of creature," who assured Morris that he was utterly opposed to all American trade in grain, and that he wished to oblige the British people, by the force of starvation, to raise enough corn for their own consumption. Fox told Morris that he and Burke were about the only two men left who believed that Americans should be allowed to trade in their own bottoms to the British islands ; and he also informed him that Pitt was not hostile to America, but simply indifferent, being absorbed in European matters, and allowing his colleagues free hands.

Becoming impatient at the long-continued delay, Morris finally wrote, very courteously but very firmly, demanding some sort of answer, and this produced a momentary activity, and assurances that he was under a misapprehension as to the delay, etc. The subject of the impressment of American sailors into British inen-of-war, — a matter of chronic complaint throughout our first forty years of national life — now came up ; and he remarked to the Duke of Leeds, with a pithy irony that should have made the saying famous: " I believe, my lord, that this is the only instance in which we are not treated as aliens." He proposed a plan which would have at least partially obviated the difficulties in the way of a settlement of the matter, but the duke would do nothing. Neither would he come to any agreement in reference to the exchange of ministers between the two countries.

Then came an interview with Pitt, and Morris, seeing how matters stood, now spoke out perfectly clearly. In answer to the accusations about our failure wholly to perform certain stipulations of the treaty, after reciting the counter accusations of the Americans, he brushed them all aside with the remark : " But, sir, what I have said tends to show that these complaints and inquiries are excellent if the parties mean to keep asunder; if they wish to come together, all such matters should be kept out of sight." He showed that the House of Representatives, in a friendly spirit, had recently decided against laying extraordinary restrictions on British vessels in our ports. " Mr. Pitt said that, instead of restrictions, we ought to give them particular privileges, in return for those we enjoy here. I assured him that I knew of none except that of being impressed, a privilege which of all others we least wished to partake of. ... Mr. Pitt said seriously that they had certainly evinced good-will to us by what they had done respecting our commerce. I replied therefore, with like seriousness, that their regulations had been dictated with a view to their own interests ; and therefore, as we felt no favor, we owed no obligation." Morris realized thoroughly that they were keeping matters in suspense because their behavior would depend upon the contingencies of war or peace with the neighboring powers; he wished to show that, if they acted thus, we would also bide our time till the moment came to strike a telling blow; and accordingly lie ended by telling Pitt, with straightforward directness, a truth that was also a threat: " We do not think it worth while to go to war with you for the [frontier] forts ; but we know our rights, and will avail ourselves of them when time and circumstances may suit."

After this conversation he became convinced that we should wait until England herself felt the necessity of a treaty before trying to negotiate one. He wrote Washington " that those who, pursuing the interests of Great Britain, wish to be on the best terms with America, are outnumbered by those whose sour prejudice and hot resentment render them averse to any intercourse except that which may immediately subserve a selfish policy. These men do not yet know America. Perhaps America does not yet know herself. . . . We are yet in but the seeding-time of national prosperity, and it will be well not to mortgage the crop before it is gathered. . . . England will not, I am persuaded, enter into a treaty with us unless we give for it more than it is worth now, and infinitely more than it will be worth hereafter. A present bargain would be that of a young heir with an old usurer. . . . But, should war break out [with a European power], the anti-American party here will agree to any terms ; for it is more the taste of the medicine which they nauseate than the quantity of the dose."

Accordingly all negotiations were broken off. In America his enemies blamed Morris for this failure. They asserted that his haughty manners and proud bearing had made him unpopular with the ministers, and that his consorting with members of the opposition had still further damaged his cause. The last assertion was wholly untrue; for he had barely more than met Fox and his associates. But on a third point there was genuine reason for dissatisfaction. Morris had confided his purpose to the French minister at London, M. de la Luzerne, doing so because he trusted to the latter's honor, and did not wish to seem to take any steps unknown to our ally; and he was in all probability also influenced by his constant association and intimacy with the French leaders. Luzerne, however, promptly used the information for his own purposes, letting the English ministers know that he was acquainted with Morris's objects, and thus increasing the weight of France by making it appear that America acted only with her consent and advice. The affair curiously illustrates Jay's wisdom eight years before, when he insisted on keeping Luzerne's superior at that time, Yergennes, in the dark as to our course during the peace negotiations. However, it is not at all likely that Mr. Pitt or the Duke of Leeds were influenced in their course by anything Luzerne said.

Leaving London, Morris made a rapid trip through the Netherlands and up the Rhine. His journals, besides the usual comments on the inns, the bad roads, poor horses, sulky postilions, and the like, are filled with very interesting observations on the character of the country through which he passed, its soil and inhabitants, and the indications they afforded of the national resources. He liked to associate with people of every kind, and he was intensely fond of natural scenery; but, what seems rather surprising in a man of his culture, he apparently cared very little for the great cathedrals, the picture galleries, and the works of art for which the old towns he visited were so famous.

He reached Paris at the end of November, but was almost immediately called to London again, returning in January, 1791, and making three or four similar trips in the course of the year. His own business affairs took up a great deal of his time. He was engaged in very many different operations, out of which he made a great deal of money, being a shrewd business man with a strong dash of the speculator. He had to prosecute a suit against the farmers-general of France for a large quantity of tobacco shipped them by contract; and he gives a very amusing description of the visits he made to the judges before whom the case was to be tried. Their occupations were certainly various, being those of a farrier, a goldsmith, a grocer, a currier, a woolen draper, and a bookseller respectively. As a sample of his efforts, take the following : " Return home and dine. At five resume my visits to my judges, and first wait upon the honorable M. Gillet, the grocer, who is in a little cuddy adjoining his shop, at cards. He assures me that the courts are impartial, and alike uninfluenced by farmers, receivers, and grand seigneurs ; that they are generally of the same opinion ; that he will do everything in his power; and the like. De Vautre cote, perfect confidence in the ability and integrity of the court. Wish only to bring the cause to such a point as that I may have the honor to present a memorial. Am vastly sorry to have been guilty of an intrusion upon the amusements of his leisure hours. Hope he will excuse the solicitude of a stranger, and patronize a claim of such evident justice. The whole goes off very well, though I with difficulty restrain my risible faculties. ... A disagreeable scene, the ridicule of which is so strongly painted to my own eyes that I cannot forbear laughing."

He also contracted to deliver Necker twenty thousand barrels of flour for the relief of Paris; wherein, by the way, he lost heavily. He took part in sundry shipping operations. Perhaps the most lucrative business in which he was engaged was in negotiating the sale of wild lands in America. He even made many efforts to buy the Virginian and Pennsylvania!! domains of the Fairfaxes and the Penns. On behalf of a syndicate, he endeavored to purchase the American debts to France and Spain ; these being purely speculative efforts, as it was supposed that the debts could be obtained at quite a low figure, while, under the new Constitution, the United States would certainly soon make arrangements for paying them off. These various operations entailed a wonderful amount of downright hard work; yet all the while he remained not only a close observer of French politics, but, to a certain extent, even an actor in them.

He called upon Lafayette as soon as he was again established in Paris, after his mission to London. Pie saw that affairs had advanced to such a pitch in France that " it was no longer a question of liberty, but simply who shall be master." He had no patience with those who wished the king to place himself, as they phrased it, at the head of the revolution, remarking: " The trade of a revolutionist appears to me a hard one for a prince." What with the folly of one side and the madness of the other, things were going to pieces very rapidly. At one of his old haunts, the club, the " sentiment aristocratique " had made great headway: one of his friends, De Moustin, now in favor with the king and queen, was " as usual on the high ropes of royal prerogative." Lafayette, however, was still wedded to his theories, and did not appear over-glad to see his American friend, all whose ideas and habits of thought were so opposed to his own; while madame was still cooler in her reception. Morris, nothing daunted, talked to his friend very frankly and seriously. He told him that the time had come when all good citizens would be obliged, simply from lack of choice, to cling to the throne; that the executive must be strengthened, and good and able men put into the council. He pronounced the " thing called a constitution" good for nothing, and showed that the National Assembly was rapidly falling into contempt. lie pointed out, for the hundredth time, that each country needed to have its own form of government; that an American constitution would not do for France, for the latter required an even higher-toned system than that of England; and that, above all things, France needed stability. He gave the reasons for his advice clearly and forcibly ; but poor Lafayette flinched from it, and could not be persuaded to take any effectual step.

It is impossible to read Morris's shrewd comments on the events of the day, and his plans in reference to them, without wondering that France herself should at the crisis have failed to produce any statesmen to be compared with him for force, insight, and readiness to do what was practically best under the circumstances; but her past history for generations had been such as to make it out of the question for her to bring forth such men as the founders of our own government. Warriors, lawgivers, and diplomats she had in abundance. Statesmen who would be both hard-headed and true-hearted, who would be wise and yet unselfish, who would enact laws for a free people that would make that people freer still, and yet hinder them from doing wrong to their neighbors, — statesmen of this order she neither had nor could have had.
Indeed, had there been such, it may well be doubted if they could have served France. With a people who made up in fickle ferocity what they lacked in self-restraint, and a king too timid and short-sighted to turn any crisis to advantage, the French statesmen, even had they been as wise as they were foolish, would hardly have been able to arrest or alter the march of events. Morris said bitterly that France was the country where everything was talked of, and where hardly anything was understood.

He told Lafayette that he thought the only hope of the kingdom lay in a foreign war ; it is possible that the idea may have been suggested to him by Lafayette's nai've remark that he believed his troops would readily follow him into action, but that they would not mount guard when it rained. Morris not only constantly urged the French ministers to make war, but actually drew up a plan of campaign for them. He believed it would turn the popular ardor, now constantly inflamed against the aristocrats, into a new channel, and that "there was no word perhaps in the dictionary which would take the place of aristocrat so readily as Anglais." In proof of the wisdom of his propositions he stated, with absolute truthfulness : " If Britain had declared war in 1774 against the house of Bourbon, the now United States would have bled freely in her cause." He was disgusted with the littleness of the men who, appalled at their own surroundings, and unable to make shift even for the moment, found themselves thrown by chance to the helm, and face to face with the wildest storm that had ever shaken a civilized government. Speaking of one of the new ministers, he remarked : " They say he is a good kind of man, which is saying very little ; " and again, " You want just now great men, to pursue great measures." Another time, in advising a war, — a war of men, not of money, — and speaking of the efforts made by the neighboring powers against the revolutionists in Flanders, he told his French friends that they must either suffer for or with their allies ; and that the latter was at once the noblest and the safest course.

In a letter to Washington he drew a picture of the chaos as it really was, and at the same time, with wonderful clear-sightedness, showed the great good which the change was eventually to bring to the mass of the people. Remembering how bitter Morris's feelings were against the revolutionists, it is extraordinary that they did not blind him to the good that would in the long run result from their movement. Not another statesman would have been able to set forth so clearly and temperately the benefits that would finally come from the convulsions he saw around him, although he rightly believed that these benefits would be even greater could the hideous excesses of the revolutionists be forthwith stopped and punished.

His letter runs: " This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of metaphysical whimsies, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. . . . The sovereign, humbled to the level of a beggar without pity, without resources, without authority, without a friend. The Assembly, at once a master and a slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in practice. It engrosses all functions, though incapable of exercising any, and has taken from this fierce, ferocious people every restraint of religion and of respect." Where this would all end, or what sum of misery would be necessary to change the popular will and awaken the popular heart, he could not say. A glorious opportunity had been lost, and for the time being the revolution had failed. Yet, he went on to say, in the consequences flowing from it he was confident he could see the foundation of future prosperity. For among these consequences were, — 1. The abolition of the different rights and privileges which had formerly kept the various provinces asunder; 2. The abolition of feudal tyranny, by which the tenure of real property would be simplified, and the rent no longer be dependent upon idle vanity, capricious taste, or sullen pride; 3. The throwing into the circle of industry those vast possessions formerly held by the clergy in mortmain, wealth conferred upon them as wages for their idleness; 4. The destruction of the system of venal jurisprudence which had established the pride and privileges of the few on the misery and degradation of the general mass; 5. Above all, the establishment of the principles of true liberty, which would remain as solid facts after the superstructure of metaphysical froth and vapor should have been blown away. Finally, " from the chaos of opinion and the conflict of its jarring elements a new order will at length arise, which, though in some degree the child of chance, may not be less productive of human happiness than the forethought provisions of human speculation." Not one other contemporary statesman could have begun to give so just an estimate of the good the revolution would accomplish; no other could have seen so deeply into its ultimate results, while also keenly conscious of the dreadful evil through which these results were being worked out.

The social life of Paris still went on, though with ever less of gayety, as the gloom gathered round about. Going with Madame de Chastellux to dine with the Duchess of Orleans, Morris was told by her royal highness that she was " ruined," that is, that her income was reduced from four hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand livres a year, so that she could no longer give him good dinners; but if he would come and fast with her, she would be glad to see him. The poor lady was yet to learn by bitter experience that real ruin was something very different from the loss of half of an enormous income.

On another occasion he breakfasted with the duchess, and was introduced to her father, with whom he agreed to dine. After breakfast she went out walking with him till nearly dinner-time, and gave him the full history of her breach with her husband, Egalite, showing the letters that had passed between them, complaining of his numerous misdeeds, and assuring Morris that what the world had attributed to fondness for her worthless spouse was merely discretion ; that she had hoped to bring him to a decent and orderly behavior, but had finally made up her mind that he could only be governed by fear.

Now and then he indulges in a quiet laugh at the absurd pretensions and exaggerated estimates of each other still affected by some of the frequenters of the various salons. " Dine with Madame de Stael. The Abbe Sieyes is here, and descants with much self-sufficiency on government, despising all that has been said or sung on that subject before him; and madame says that his writings and opinions will form in politics a new era, like those of Newton in physics."

After dining with Marmontel, he notes "in his diary that his host " thinks soundly," — rare praise for him to bestow on any of the French statesmen of the time. He records a lion mot of Talleyrand's. When the Assembly had declared war on the emperor conditionally upon the latter's failing to beg pardon before a certain date, the little bishop remarked that " the nation was une parvenue, and of course insolent." At the British ambassador's he met the famous Colonel Tarleton, who did not know his nationality, and amused him greatly by descanting at length on the American war.

   He was very fond of the theatre, especially of the Comedie Francaise, where Preville, whom he greatly admired, was acting in Moliere's " Amphitryon." Many of the plays, whose plots presented in any way analogies to what was actually happening in the political world, raised great excitement among the spectators. Going to see " Brutus" acted, he records that the noise and altercations were tremendous, but that finally the democrats in the parterre got the upper hand by sheer lusty roaring, which they kept up for a quarter of an hour at a time, and, at the conclusion of the piece, insisted upon the bust of Voltaire being crowned and placed on the stage. Soon afterwards a tragedy called " Charles Neuf," founded on the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was put on the stage, to help the Assembly in their crusade against the clergy; he deemed it a very extraordinary piece to be represented in a Catholic country, and thought that it would give a fatal blow to the Catholic religion.

The priesthood, high and low, he disliked more than any other set of men; all his comments on them show his contempt. The high prelates he especially objected to. The Bishop of Orleans he considered to be a luxurious old gentleman, " of the kind whose sincerest prayer is for the fruit of good living, one who evidently thought it more important to speak than to speak the truth." The leader of the great church dignitaries, in their fight for their rich benefices, was the Abbe Maury, who, Morris writes, " is a man who looks like a down-right ecclesiastical scoundrel." He met him in Madame de Nadaillac's salon, where were " a party of fierce aristocrats. They have the word ' valet' written on their foreheads in large characters. Maury is formed to govern such men, and they are formed to obey him or any one else. But Maury seems to have too much vanity for a great man." To tell the bare truth is sometimes to make the most venomous comment possible, and this he evidently felt when he wrote of his meeting with the Cardinal de Rohan: " We talk among other things about religion, for the cardinal is very devout. He was once the lover of Madame de Flahaut's  sister."

But as the tremendous changes went on about him, Morris had continually less and less time to spend in mere social pleasures ; graver and weightier matters called for his attention, and his diary deals with the shifts and stratagems of the French politicians, and pays little heed to the sayings and manners of nobles, bishops, and ladies of rank.

The talented, self-confident, fearless American, admittedly out of sympathy with what he called " this abominable populace," was now well known ; and in their terrible tangle of dangers and perplexities, court and ministry alike turned to him for help. Perhaps there has hardly been another instance where, in such a crisis, the rulers have clutched in their despair at the advice of a mere private stranger sojourning in the land on his own business. The king and his ministers, as well as the queen, kept in constant communication with him. With Montmorin he dined continually, and was consulted at every stage. But he could riot prevail on them to adopt the bold, vigorous measures he deemed necessary; his plain speaking startled them, and they feared it would not suit the temper of the people. He drafted numerous papers for them, among others a royal speech, which the king liked, but which his ministers prevented him from using. In fact, it had grown to be hopeless to try to help the court; for the latter pursued each course by fits and starts, now governed by advice from Coblentz, now by advice from Brussels, and then for a brief spasm going its own gait. All the while the people at large knew their own minds no better than poor Louis knew his, and cheered him with fervent ecstasy one day, only to howl at him with malignant fury the next. With such a monarch and such subjects it is not probable that any plan would have worked well; but Morris's was the ablest as well as the boldest and best defined of the many that were offered to the wretched, halting king; and had his proposed policy been pursued, things might have come out better, and they coulu not possibly have come out worse.

All through these engrossing affairs, he kept up the liveliest interest in what was going on in his own country, writing home shrewd observations on every step taken. One of his remarks deserves to be kept in mind. In speaking of the desire of European nations to legislate against the introduction of our produce, he says that this effort has after all its bright side ; because it will force us " to make great and rapid progress in useful manufactures. This alone is wanting to complete our independence. We shall then be, as it were, a world by ourselves."