A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 1, part 1: George Washington
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 1, part 1: George Washington
Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government; Washington, George, 1732-1799
Article 8 to be omitted as unnecessary with Morocco, and
inefficacious and little honorable with any of the Barbary powers;
but it may furnish occasion to sound Spain on the project of a
convention of the powers at war with the Barbary States to keep
up by rotation a constant cruise of a given force on their coasts
till they shall be compelled to renounce forever and against all
nations their predatory practices. Perhaps the infidelities of the
Algerines to their treaty of peace with Spain, though the latter
does not choose to break openly, may induce her to subsidize _us_
to cruise against them with a given force.
Articles 9 and 10, concerning fisheries, to be omitted as
inapplicable.
Article 11. The first paragraph of this article respecting the
droit d'aubaine to be omitted, that law being supposed peculiar
to France.
Article 17, giving asylum in the ports of either to the armed vessels
of the other with the prizes taken from the enemies of that other,
must be qualified as it is in the nineteenth article of the Prussian
treaty, as the stipulation in the latter part of the article that
"no shelter or refuge shall be given in the ports of the one to such
as shall have made prize on the subjects of the other of the parties"
would forbid us, in case of a war between France and Spain, to give
shelter in our ports to prizes made by the latter on the former,
while the first part of the article would oblige us to shelter those
made by the former on the latter--a very dangerous covenant, and which
ought never to be repeated in any other instance.
Article 29. Consuls should be received at all the ports at which the
vessels of either party may be received.
Article 30, concerning free ports in Europe and America, free ports in
the Spanish possessions in America, and particularly at The Havannah,
are more to be desired than expected. It can therefore only be
recommended to the best endeavors of the commissioners to obtain them.
It will be something to obtain for our vessels, flour, etc., admission
to those ports during their pleasure. In like manner, if they could be
prevailed on to reestablish our right of cutting logwood in the Bay of
Campeachy on the footing on which it stood before the treaty of 1763,
it would be desirable and not endanger to us any contest with the
English, who by the revolution treaty are restrained to the
southeastern parts of Yucatan.
Article 31. The _act_ of ratification on our part may require a
twelvemonth from the date of the treaty, as the Senate meets regularly
but once a year; and to return it to Madrid for _exchange_ may require
four months more.
The treaty must not exceed ---- years' duration, except the clauses
relating to boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi, which must
be perpetual and final. Indeed, these two subjects had better be in a
separate instrument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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