A new French minister was at hand, accredited to President Washington, with fresh instructions. Differences on the obligations of the guaranty appeared in the Cabinet,--some holding that no necessity for decision existed, as France had made no demand,--and others, that, the Treaty of Alliance being plainly defensive, the guaranty did not apply to a war begun by France. After ample discussion, the Proclamation of Neutrality was adopted, April 22, 1793, destined to become a turning-point in our history. Chief Justice Marshall, whose opportunities of information were unquestionable, lets us know that the Proclamation “was intended to prevent the French minister from demanding _the performance of the guaranty contained in the Treaty of Alliance_.”[160] But before the Proclamation reached France, orders were issued there for the capture and confiscation of enemy goods on board neutral vessels; whereas it was stipulated with the United States that free ships should make free goods; so that, even if the denial of the guaranty was wrong, and the Proclamation, according to French accusation, “insidious,” the United States were not the first to offend. On the day of the Proclamation came news by the journals that Genet, the new French minister, had landed in South Carolina, where, amid the darkest days of the Revolution, Lafayette had also first landed. Full of conviction that France had only to make herself heard in order to be sustained, Genet exalted himself conspicuously above the Government. By instructions from the Executive Council of the French Republic, dated 17th of January, 1793, he was enjoined “to penetrate profoundly the sense of the treaties of 1778, and to watch over the articles favorable to the commerce and navigation of the United States, and to make the Americans consider engagements which might appear onerous _as the just price of the independence which the French nation had secured to them_.” Not content with existing safeguards, the new minister was to negotiate a supplementary treaty, to fix more surely “the _reciprocal guaranty_ of the possessions of the two powers.”[161] In this spirit he commenced a turbulent career, charging offensively that the President, before knowing what the minister had to communicate from the French Republic, was in a hurry “to proclaim sentiments on which decency and friendship should at least have drawn a veil,”--that he “took on himself to give to our treaties arbitrary interpretations absolutely contrary to their true sense,” and that “he left no other indemnification to France for the blood she spilt, for the treasure she dissipated, in fighting for the independence of the United States, but the illusory advantage of bringing into their ports the prizes made on their enemies without being able to sell them,”--and that the Secretary of War, on his communication of the wish of the Windward Islands “to receive promptly some fire-arms and some cannon, which might put into