The minister of the United States saw the danger lowering upon his own country. In a letter to the Secretary of State, dated December 21, 1792, after presenting a rapid sketch of the rising of Europe against France, he adds: “The circumstance of a war with Britain becomes important to us in more cases than one”; and he then alludes to “the question respecting the _guaranty_ of American possessions, especially if France should attempt to defend her islands.”[157] Notoriously, Gouverneur Morris sympathized little with the French Republic, but, against all arguments for non-compliance with our original engagements, because the Government with which they were made had ceased to exist, his sensitive nature broke forth in the “wish that all our treaties, however onerous, may be strictly fulfilled according to their true intent and meaning,” which he followed in language foreign to the phrases of diplomacy, by picturing “the honest nation as that which, like the honest man, ‘Hath to its plighted faith and vow forever firmly stood; And though it promised to its loss, yet makes that promise good.’”[158] In harmony with this exclamation of the plenipotentiary are the words of Vattel, an authority much quoted at the time: “To refuse an ally the succors we owe him, without any good ground of dispensation, is doing him an injury, … and there being a natural obligation to repair the damage caused by our fault, and especially by our injustice, we are bound to indemnify an ally for all the losses he may have sustained from our unjust refusal.”[159] Since the signature of the treaties times had changed, and men had changed with them. There was no bad faith on either side, in the ordinary sense of the term, but intervening events and exigencies of self-defence had driven each into unexpected inconsistencies of conduct. If on one side there was neglect of original engagements, there was on the other equal neglect of international duties. The tornado in mad career uprooted old landmarks, and each was striving to find new lines of reciprocal relations. Franklin, signing the “guaranty,” did not expect so soon to call down upon his country the lightnings of an embattled world; nor did France, while formally conceding neutral rights on the ocean and assuring our national independence, expect so soon to become the plunderer of our commerce. But the great tragedy would have been less complete, if its domineering Nemesis had suffered the two republics to dwell in harmony together. They were whirled, on each side, into those questionable acts out of which have sprung the claims and counter-claims now under consideration.