66

ET. 62.]

NEW DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENTS.

301

was lost in the senate by the casting vote of Vice-President Adams; not," as Washington remarked in a letter to Tobias Lear on the sixth of May, "as it is said and generally believed, from a disinclination to the ulterior expedience of the measure, but from a desire to try the effect of negotiation previous thereto." Mr. Monroe, acting under instructions from the Virginia legislature, proposed in the senate to suspend by law the article of the treaty of peace which secured to British creditors the right of recovering in the United States their honest debts. This proposition was frowned down by every right-minded man in that chamber.

Another delicate matter connected with the foreign relations of the United States now occupied the mind of Washington. The French government, as we have observed, on recalling Genet, asked that of the United States to recall Mr. Morris. Washington was anxious to appoint a judicious successor - one that would be acceptable to the French, and who would not compromise the neutrality of his own country. He confided in Pinckney, and desired Mr. Jay, in the event of his mission being successful, to remain in London as resident minister. Pinckney would then be sent to France. But Jay would not consent to the arrangement. Washington then offered the French mission to Robert R. Livingston, chancellor of the state of New York, who, with his extensive and influential family connections, was in politics a republican. Livingston declined, and the president finally offered it to James Monroe. He consented

serve, and his nomination was confirmed by the senate on the twenty-eighth of May. Soon after this, John Quincy Adams, son of the vice-president, was appointed minister at the Hague in place of Mr. Short, Jefferson's secretary of legation in France, who went to Spain to ascertain what Carmichael, the American minister there, was doing, his government being unable to hear from him except at long intervals.

Mr. Monroe arrived in Paris toward the middle of August, and immediately sent to the president of the convention the following letter:

"Citizen-President:- Having, several days since, arrived with a

commission from the president of the United States of America, to represent those states in quality of minister plenipotentiary at the capital of the French republic, I have thought it my duty to make my mission known as early as possible to the national representatives. It belongs to them to determine the day, and to point out the mode, in which I am to be acknowledged the representative of their ally and sister republic. I make this communication with the greater pleasure, because it affords me an opportunity, not only to certify to the representatives of the free citizens of France my personal attachment to the cause of liberty, but to assure them at the same time, in the most positive way, that the government and people of America take the highest interest in the liberty, success, and prosperity of the French republic."

Robespierre had lately fallen. His bloody rule was at an end. For some time he had been hated by the Convention, to which body reason and conscience were bringing their convictions. On the twenty-eighth of July the Convention resolved to crush him. Billaud Varennes, in a speech replete with invective, denounced him as a tyrant; and when Robespierre attempted to speak, his voice was drowned with cries of "Down with the tyrant! down with the tyrant!" A decree of outlawry was then passed, and he and some of his friends were ordered to immediate execution. With their fall the Reign of Terror ended. The nation breathed freer, and the curtain fell upon one of the bloodiest tragedies in the history of the race.

It was at this auspicious moment that Monroe appeared. The sentiments of his letter were so much in consonance with the feelings of the hour, that it is said the president of the Convention embraced Monroe affectionately when they met. It was decreed that the American and French flags should be entwined and hung up in the hall of the Convention, as an emblem of the union of the two republics; and Monroe, not to be outdone in acts of courtesy, presented the banner of his country to the Convention in the name of his people.

Congress adjourned on the ninth of June to the first Monday in