The Life of Albert Gallatin

But the charm of Parisian society in Mr. Gallatin’s eyes did not consist in his aristocratic affiliations. These indeed smoothed his path and relieved him from that sense of awkward strangeness which was the lot of most American diplomates in European society; but his sympathies lay with another class of men. “There is Talleyrand,” said he to Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, when introducing him at court; “he is a humbug, unworthy of his reputation, but the world thinks otherwise, and you must not speak of my opinion.” The apostles of legitimacy and the oracles of the Faubourg St. Germain were never favorites with him, and his old republican principles were rather revived than weakened by this contact with the essence of all he had most disliked in his younger and more ardent days. His real sympathies lay with the men of science; with Humboldt, with La Place, or with pure diplomatists like Pozzo di Borgo, the brilliant Russian ambassador at Paris, with whom his relations were close and confidential; or, finally, with French liberals like La Fayette, between whom and all Americans the kindest exchange of friendly civilities was incessant. Insufficient as the salary of American minister was, Mr. Gallatin had a handsome establishment and entertained as freely as his position required. The company he selected as a matter of personal choice may be partly inferred from a dinner at which Mr. Ogle Tayloe was present in 1819; La Fayette, the Duke de Broglie, his brother-in-law, De Staël, Lord and Lady Ashburton (Alexander Baring), and Baron Humboldt. “Humboldt talked nearly all the time in good English.” French society was, however, in a very disturbed condition, and Mr. Gallatin did not always find it easy to avoid embarrassments. One example of such difficulties occurred in the case of La Place, who was somewhat sensitive in regard to his relations with the reigning family, and who, on finding himself about to be seated at Mr. Gallatin’s table in company with so obnoxious a Republican as La Fayette, was seized with a sudden illness and obliged to return home.

Social amusements, however, Mr. Gallatin regarded very much as he did good wine or good cooking, – things desirable in themselves, but ending with the momentary gratification. He made no record of this evanescent intellectual flavor. He wrote almost nothing except his official letters. During no period of his life are his memoranda and his correspondence so meagre and uninteresting as now. He had little to occupy him so far as official work was concerned, except at intervals when some emergency arose, and at first he chafed at this want of interest. He was indeed always possessed with the idea that he would rather be at home, and he averred every year with great regularity that he expected to return in the following summer. This is, however, a very common if not universal rule among American diplomatists of the active type. In reality, Mr. Gallatin never was so happy and never so thoroughly in his proper social sphere as when he lived in Paris and talked of Indian antiquities with Humboldt, of bi-metallic currency with Baring, and of Spanish diplomacy with Pozzo di Borgo.

Even his letters to Jefferson show his self-reproachful idleness:

GALLATIN TO JEFFERSONParis, 17th July, 1817.

Dear Sir, – …The growing prosperity of the United States is an object of admiration for all the friends of liberty in Europe, a reproach on almost all the European governments. At no period has America stood on higher ground abroad than now, and every one who represents her may feel a just pride in the contrast between her situation and that of all other countries, and in the feeling of her perfect independence from all foreign powers. This last sentiment acquires new force here in seeing the situation of France, under the guardianship of the four great potentates. That this state of things should cease is in every respect highly desirable. Although not immediately affected by it, we cannot but wish to see the ancient natural check of England resume its place in the system of the civilized world; and it can hardly be borne in the present state of knowledge, that Austria or Russia should in the great scale stand before France. Indeed, it is only physical power that now prevails, and as I had most sincerely wished that France, when oppressing others, should be driven back within her own bounds, I may be allowed to sigh for her emancipation from foreign yoke. I cannot view the arrangements made at Vienna as calculated to ensure even tranquillity. There is now a kind of torpid breathing-spell; but the fire is not extinct. The political institutions do not either here, in Italy, or even in Germany, harmonize with the state of knowledge, with the feelings and wishes of the people. What must be the consequence? New conflicts whenever opportunity will offer, and bloody revolutions effected or attempted, instead of that happy, peaceable, and gradual improvement which philanthropists had anticipated, and which seems to be exclusively the portion of our happy country.

We have lately lost Mme. de Staël, and she is a public loss. Her mind improved with her years without any diminution of her fine and brilliant genius. She was a power by herself, and had more influence on public opinion, and even on the acts of government, than any other person not in the ministry. I may add that she was one of your most sincere admirers.

I thirst for America, and I hope that the time is not distant when I may again see her shores and enjoy the blessings which are found only there. There I also hope of once more meeting with you.

Nevertheless, Mr. Gallatin was far from idle during these seven years. The wars in Europe had left a long train of diplomatic disputes behind them. Commercial treaties were necessary for the protection of American commerce. The old difficulties with England were still unsettled, and were pressing for settlement. Spain was always on the verge of war with the United States, both in respect to her undecided Florida boundary and the status of her revolted American colonies. Mr. Gallatin was at the head of the diplomatic service, highly valued both by Mr. Monroe, by Mr. Adams, who, in 1817, succeeded Mr. Monroe as Secretary of State, and by Mr. Crawford, who, as Secretary of the Treasury, had much to say in regard to questions of foreign commerce. Perhaps there was more unanimity among these three gentlemen, in their opinions of Mr. Gallatin, than there was on any other political subject. In fact, since the time of Dr. Franklin, the United States had never sent a minister abroad with qualifications equal to his, and it will never be possible to find a minister to France who approaches more nearly the highest ideal; accordingly, the government mainly depended upon him for its work, and economized his services by employing him freely in all its foreign relations.

1818.

The immediate object of sending a minister to France was to press for a settlement of American claims. These claims ran back ten years or more, to the time of the Berlin and Milan decrees, when large numbers of American ships with their cargoes were seized and confiscated, or destroyed at sea, by order of the Emperor Napoleon, in violation of every principle of decency, equity, and law. To exact a settlement of these claims was one of the points on which our country was most determined; to elude a settlement was a matter of equal determination with the government of Louis XVIII. No one, least of all the French ministries of the restoration, denied the indignity and the outrage of the robberies committed by Napoleon, nor did they quite venture to assert that Louis was not responsible for the acts of his predecessor; indeed, in Mr. Gallatin’s first interview with the Duke de Richelieu, that minister frankly admitted the justice of the demand, and only asked some consideration for the helpless condition of France, weighed to the ground by indemnities exacted from her by the great European powers. But this was only a temporary weakness; Mr. Gallatin very soon found that there was little hope of obtaining any formal recognition, much less any settlement, of his claims, and he saw with some irritation and some amusement a host of difficulties, side-issues, petty complaints, and assumed quarrels, started by one French minister after another to distract his attention and check his pressure, until year after year elapsed without his gaining a single step, and at last the minister in 1823, M. de Chateaubriand, ceased to pay his notes any attention at all, and contented himself with replying that they did not alter his view of the subject. This exhausted Mr. Gallatin’s patience, and he roundly told M. de Chateaubriand that if France meant to remain friends with America, her conduct must be changed. Simple as the case was, Mr. Gallatin gained nothing in seven years of patient effort; his elaborate and admirable notes were utterly thrown away; and he left the whole question at last, to all appearance, precisely where he found it.

During the first year of his residence abroad, this subject of the French claims was the only one which occupied his attention, and when it became clear that the French government would do nothing about these, he complained that he was absolutely without occupation. In July, 1817, he was sent to the Hague to assist Dr. Eustis, then minister there, in negotiating a commercial treaty with the Netherlands. This negotiation occupied two months and was also a failure. The Dutch insisted even more pertinaciously than the English on what Mr. Gallatin called the “preposterous ground” of colonial equivalents. It was found impossible even to stipulate for the mutual abandonment of discriminating duties, a stipulation which Mr. Gallatin regarded as the most valuable part of his convention with England in 1815. The Dutch insisted that a repeal of discriminating duties must not be limited merely to importations of the produce and manufactures of the two countries, and argued with great force that the geographical position of Holland and Belgium made it impossible to distinguish between their own produce and that brought down the Rhine or from across their border. To this Mr. Gallatin could only reply that his government could not offer more than fair reciprocity, and that the abolition of discriminating duties such as the Dutch claimed, would be wholly to the disadvantage of the American merchant and equally so to that of the American government in its negotiations with other powers. Yet, if the Dutch would have conceded the first point of admitting American vessels on favorable terms to their East India colonies, some compromise might have been effected in regard to the discriminating duties; in the inability to effect any transaction of this sort, the negotiation was in a friendly way adjourned.

In the following year Mr. Gallatin was employed on a more serious mission. The commercial convention of July 3, 1815, which he had negotiated in London after the Treaty of Ghent, would expire by limitation in July, 1819, and a timely agreement with the British government in regard to its renewal was very desirable. The opportunity was taken by the President to reopen negotiations on the whole range of disputed points left unsettled by the Treaty of Ghent, or arising under that treaty. As for impressment, indeed, Lord Castlereagh had very recently again declined the American proposals for a settlement, and the subject was therefore not pressed; but the fisheries, the commercial intercourse with Canada and the West Indies, and the boundary from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, were all added to the negotiation; indemnity for slaves carried away under the Treaty of Ghent was to be urged; and the serious character of the dispute over the North-West boundary was just beginning to make itself evident in connection with Mr. Astor’s trading settlement on the Columbia River.

Mr. Richard Rush was then the American minister in England; he had been called into public life by Gallatin, who made him Comptroller of the Treasury and presumably urged him for the place of Attorney-General, to which post he had been appointed on the retirement of William Pinkney in 1811. With him Mr. Gallatin was on most friendly terms, and Mr. Rush welcomed with great pleasure, what is always a somewhat delicate act, the intrusion of a third person in his relations with the government to which he was accredited. Mr. Gallatin was ordered to England, where he arrived August 16, 1818, and was occupied till the end of October, his “necessary and reasonable expenses” being, as usual, his only remuneration.

The negotiation with England of 1818 was not very much more fruitful in result than that of 1815; nevertheless the two countries had made some progress. On the one hand, Lord Castlereagh was still far in advance of public sentiment and had done something towards breaking down the insular arrogance of the colonial and navigation system; on the other hand, the United States government had plucked up courage to hasten the rapidity of British movements by retaliatory legislation of its own. Early in 1817 Congress passed two acts, by one of which British vessels were prohibited from importing into the United States any articles other than those which were produced or manufactured within the British dominions; by the other a tonnage duty of two dollars a ton was levied on all foreign vessels entering the United States from any foreign port with which vessels of the United States were not ordinarily permitted to trade. A year later, shortly before Mr. Gallatin was sent to England, Congress had gone one step further, and had absolutely closed the ports of the United States against every British vessel coming from ports ordinarily closed against vessels of the United States.

This was the condition of affairs with which Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Rush had to deal. As in 1815, the British government was represented by Mr. Frederic Robinson, now president of the Board of Trade, assisted by Mr. Goulburn. The American commissioners offered five articles, covering the fisheries, the boundary, the West India trade, that with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the captured slaves. The English plenipotentiaries offered a scheme for regulating impressment. Finally, the Americans proposed a series of rules in regard to contraband and maritime points.

The result of repeated conferences was to throw out the articles on maritime rights and impressment, and to refer the West India article to the President. A convention limited to ten years was then signed covering the fisheries, the boundary between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky Mountains, the joint use of the Columbia River, the slave indemnity, and finally the renewal of the commercial convention of 1815. On the whole, there was certainly a considerable improvement in the relations of the two countries; even in the matter of impressments, Lord Castlereagh was ready to concede very nearly all that was required; the navigation of the Mississippi was definitively set at rest; even in regard to the West India trade, Mr. Robinson made very liberal concessions, and accepted in full the principle that this trade should be thrown open on principles of perfect reciprocity. That the British should have got so far as to admit that they were ready to open this trade at all on principles of reciprocity was no small step, but when Mr. Gallatin undertook to put upon paper his ideas of perfect reciprocity, it was found that agreement was still out of the question. He required that the vessels and their cargoes should on either side be subject to no charges to which both parties should not be equally liable, while the British insisted upon reserving the right to impose discriminating duties in favor of the trade of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Mr. Robinson did not, however, attempt to defend the dogmas of the British colonial and navigation laws; he only urged the impossibility of breaking them down at once. To the American argument of reciprocity he opposed the powerful interests he was obliged to humor, – the fish and the lumber of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; the salted provisions and the flour of Ireland; the shipping of England; and the influence of the West India planters who sat in Parliament or moved in the business circles of the city.

There could be little doubt that the new retaliatory legislation of the United States would sooner or later bring the two countries into collision on this old subject of controversy; for the United States government was by no means inclined to look back with pleasure or with pride upon the humiliations which it had endured, ever since the peace of 1783, on this point of the colonial trade. Perhaps it had now a tendency to assert its rights and its dignity in a tone somewhat too abrupt, and even unnecessarily irritating to European ears. The new-born sense of nationality with which, since the peace of Ghent, every American citizen was swelling would tolerate from the national government nothing short of the fullest assertion of the national pride; and political parties no longer, as in the days of Mr. Jefferson, shrank from supporting their rights by force. Mr. Gallatin had done what he could to prevent mischief, and it remained to be seen whether his efforts were to be successful. His despatches dwelt repeatedly on the intimation of Mr. Robinson that Great Britain was certain to recede if she were allowed time to prepare, and that unlimited intercourse with the colonies would be the sure result of such a partial intercourse as he offered. On the other hand, however, the United States were still better aware that English diplomacy was inclined to respect very little except strength.

While the colonial dispute was thus left open, another serious question was only partially closed. On the subject of the fisheries, Mr. Gallatin effected a compromise not altogether satisfactory even to himself; he obtained an express recognition of the permanent right, but he was obliged to concede essential limitations of the practice. Perhaps, indeed, this question is one of those which admits of no complete settlement; as Mr. Gallatin wrote on November 6 to Mr. Adams: “The right of taking and drying fish in harbors within the exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain, particularly on coasts now inhabited, was extremely obnoxious to her, and was considered as what the French civilians call a servitude… I am satisfied that we could have obtained additional fishing-ground in exchange of the words ‘for ever.’… Yet I will not conceal that this subject caused me more anxiety than any other branch of the negotiations, and that, after having participated in the Treaty of Ghent, it was a matter of regret to be obliged to sign an agreement which left the United States in any respect in a worse situation than before the war… But … if a compromise was to take place, the present time and the terms proposed appeared more eligible than the chance of future contingencies… With much reluctance I yielded to those considerations, rendered more powerful by our critical situation with Spain, and used my best endeavors to make the compromise on the most advantageous terms that could be obtained.”155

On his return to Paris in October, 1818, an entirely different class of objects forced themselves on Mr. Gallatin’s attention. This was the period when Spain’s American colonies were in revolt, and it was of the highest importance to the United States that Europe should intervene in no way in the quarrel. Mr. Gallatin’s business was to obtain early information of whatever concerned this subject, and to prepare the European powers for the recognition by the United States of the South American republics. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle was then sitting, and its proceedings were an object of intense curiosity throughout the world. So far as the policy of the United States was concerned, the result of this congress was very favorable; for Spain, finding herself abandoned by Europe, was driven into a treaty for the sale of Florida. This treaty was made, but its ratification was refused by the Spanish government on various pretexts, until a new revolution in Spain brought about a change of policy. In all these transactions Mr. Gallatin was deeply interested, and his advices to the home government furnished much of its best information.

1819.

Meanwhile, his powers to negotiate a commercial convention with France had lain nearly dormant, until in 1819 they were called out by a complication which soon brought the two countries to the verge of a commercial war. The French commercial system had never been a very enlightened one, but so long as her shipping remained in the state of nullity in which the long wars left it, American commerce had hardly perceived the fact that American ships were loaded with extra charges and discriminating duties such as made quite impossible all effective competition with the vessels of France. When at last the French commercial marine revived, complaints of the excessive burden of these discriminating duties and charges began to pour in from American consuls and merchants. The question was one of time only, when all commerce between the United States and France would be carried on exclusively in French ships. Well aware that the French government was entirely controlled in its commercial policy by the spirit of monopoly and narrow interests, Mr. Gallatin, while remonstrating to the minister of foreign affairs, warned the President that mere remonstrance would have no effect and that stronger measures must be used. He would have preferred an amendment to the Constitution authorizing Congress to lay an export duty on American produce when exported in foreign vessels; but, rather than wait for so distant and uncertain a remedy, he recommended that Congress should at once impose a countervailing tonnage duty of $12.50 per ton on French ships. This despatch was written on the 25th October, 1819. The rest of the story may be found recorded in Mr. Adams’s Diary:

1820.

“May 15, 1820. – …Mr. Hyde de Neuville, the French minister, was there [at the Capitol] much fretted at the passage of a bill for levying a tonnage duty of $18 a ton upon French vessels, to commence the 1st July next. It is merely a countervailing duty to balance discriminating duties in France upon the same articles as imported in French or American vessels. It passes on the earnest recommendation of Mr. Gallatin after a neglect of three years by the French government of our repeated proposals to negotiate a commercial treaty, and after full warning given by Mr. Gallatin that, if they did not come to some arrangement with us, countervailing measures would be taken at the present session of Congress. The bill has been before Congress half the session, and De Neuville had never mentioned it to me. He probably had flattered himself that it would not pass. Now, after it had passed both Houses, he was in great agitation about it, and entreated me to ask the President to object to its passage, at least to postpone its commencement till the 1st of October. He said the 1st of July was only six weeks off, and would not even give the French merchants notice of what was awaiting them… I told him it was now too late to make the amendment. I mentioned, however, his request to the President, who said it could not be complied with.”

“September 5, 1820. – I received a despatch of 14th July from A. Gallatin, after Mr. Hyde de Neuville had arrived in Paris. Gallatin encloses a copy of a very able note that he had sent to Baron Pasquier, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, concerning the tonnage duty upon French vessels coming into the ports of the United States, laid at the last session of Congress, but he complains that the measures of Congress, which he had recommended, were not adopted, but others more irritating to France, and also that his letters were published. The law of Congress was certainly a blister, and his letters were not oil to soften its application. The commencement of the law was fixed too soon, and the duty was too high. But France had been so sluggish and so deaf to friendly representations that it was necessary to awaken her by acts of another tone.”

1821.

Certainly government was much to blame in this matter. Mr. Gallatin sent over a careful outline of the bill he wished to pass, fixing the duty at $12.50 and arranging the details so as to facilitate negotiation. Government proceeded to enact an unjust and extravagant bill, and then threw the responsibility on Mr. Gallatin. This is the special annoyance to which diplomatic agents are most frequently subjected. Mr. Gallatin remonstrated to his government and maintained his position stoutly against the French minister, who, after at once doubling the French discriminating duties, at last transferred the negotiation to Washington, where Mr. Adams was obliged to take it up.