In this instance the enforcement of the paper treaties pre-existing between France and America threatened a rupture between the two countries. The French ambassador to the United States presented a remonstrance in September 1795 wherein he insisted upon the mutual duties of neutrality. Not having received any answer, he made further applications in the ensuing year, which were equally disregarded. In his last note (27th of October, 1796) he observed, “that neutrality no longer exists when, in the course of war, the neutral nation grants to one of the belligerent powers advantages not stipulated by treaties anterior to the war, or suffers that power to seize upon them.” Mr. Pickering, the United States Secretary of State, replied (3rd of November, 1796), that by the treaty of 1778 with France it was expressly stipulated _that free ships should make free goods_;[242] that the Americans, being now at peace, have the right of carrying the property of the enemies of France; and that the French could not expect them to renounce that privilege because it happened to operate to the disadvantage of one of the parties engaged in the war. He maintained _that the captures made by the British of American vessels having French property on board were warranted by the law of nations_; that the operation of this law was contemplated by France and the United States when they formed their treaty of commerce, and that their special stipulation on this point was meant as an exception to an universal rule.[243] The Americans, moreover, saw the advantage of preserving amicable commercial relations with Great Britain, and this “_perfidious condescension_,” as the French stigmatised it, “to the tyrannical and homicidal rage of the English government concurred to plunge the people of France into the horrors of famine.”[244] This violent correspondence thus threatened to embroil France and the United States, and in about three weeks afterwards (15th of November, 1796) M. Adet, the French Minister at Philadelphia, gave notice that his diplomatic functions were suspended, and, at the same time, the Directory of France refused to receive Mr. Pinckney, the accredited ambassador from the United States. It was at this period, while French armies, under the generals of the Republic, were pursuing their victorious career by land, that England, on her natural element, the sea, sought to secure a compensating balance by the monopoly of the carrying trade of the world. Desperate measures were considered necessary to counteract the sweeping conquests of the French and to save herself from what then appeared to be impending annihilation. In 1794 and 1795 the conquest of Belgium and Holland had been achieved by the arms of France; and in the following year Napoleon began his victorious campaign in Italy, his first battle having been gained at Montenotte on the 11th of April, 1796.[245]