The ratification by the First Consul followed the celebration at Morfontaine, so that the Convention, with its postponement of mutual claims, was definitely accepted by France. It was otherwise in the United States, where the result did not find favor. The postponement of a controversy is not a settlement, and here was nothing but postponement, leaving the old cloud hanging over the country, ready to burst at the motion of England or France. It was important that the early treaties, with their entangling engagements, should cease, even as a subject of future negotiation. In this spirit, the Senate, on the submission of the Convention for ratification, expunged the second article, providing that “the parties will negotiate further on these subjects,” and limited the Convention to eight years. On the 18th of February, 1801, President Adams, by proclamation countersigned by John Marshall, as Secretary of State, published the Convention as duly ratified, “saving and excepting the second article,” which was declared “to be expunged, and of no force or validity.”[199] The precise effect of this proceeding was not explained, and it remained to see how it would be regarded in France. Were the claims on France abandoned? This was the question which occupied the attention of our minister, Mr. Murray, when charged to exchange with France the ratifications of the Convention as amended by the Senate. Reporting to the Government at home his conference with the French plenipotentiaries, he said, “I fear that they will press an article of formal abandonment on our part, _which I shall evade_.”[200] He hoped, to keep still another chance for indemnities. On the other hand, the French plenipotentiaries feared that an unconditional suppression of the second article would leave them exposed to the claims of the United States without chance for their counter-claims; but they did not object to a mutual abandonment of indemnities, which Mr. Murray admitted would “always be _set off_ against each other.”[201] At last the conclusion was reached, and on the 31st of July, 1801, the Convention was ratified by the First Consul, with the limitation to eight years, and with the retrenchment of the second article, according to the amendment by the Senate, the whole with a proviso by the First Consul “THAT BY THIS RETRENCHMENT THE TWO STATES RENOUNCE THE RESPECTIVE PRETENSIONS WHICH ARE THE OBJECT OF THE SAID ARTICLE.”[202] Such were the important words of final settlement. What had been left to inference in the amendment of the Senate was placed beyond question by this French proviso. Claims and counter-claims were not merely suspended; they were formally abandoned. The Convention, with this decisive modification, was submitted to the Senate by President Jefferson, and again ratified by a vote of twenty-two yeas to four nays. On the 21st of December, 1801, it was promulgated by the President in the usual form, with its supplementary proviso, and all