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 ''vessels having French property on board were warranted by the law of nations''; that the operation of this law was contemplated by France and the United States when they formed their treaty of commerce, and that their special stipulation on this point was meant as an exception to an universal rule. The Americans, moreover, saw the advantage of preserving amicable commercial relations with Great Britain, and this "perfidious condescension," as the French stigmatised it, "to the tyrannical and homicidal rage of the English government concurred to plunge the people of France into the horrors of famine." This violent correspondence thus threatened to embroil France and the United States, and in about three weeks afterwards (15th of November, 1796) M. Adet, the French Minister at Philadelphia, gave notice that his diplomatic functions were suspended, and, at the same time, the Directory of France refused to receive Mr. Pinckney, the accredited ambassador from the United States.

It was at this period, while French armies, under the generals of the Republic, were pursuing their victorious career by land, that England, on her natural element, the sea, sought to secure a compensating balance by the monopoly of the carrying trade of the world. Desperate measures were considered necessary to counteract the sweeping conquests of the French and to save herself from