How France would have conducted herself towards America and American commerce, after all treaty stipulations had ceased, and under the sense of services rendered and injuries received, I know not. It is, however, an unpleasant reflection, that in all national quarrels, the innocent, and even the friendly part of the community, become involved with the culpable and the unfriendly; and as the accounts that arrived from America continued to manifest an invariable attachment in the general mass of the people to their original ally, in opposition to the new-fangled Washington faction,--the resolutions that had been taken in France were suspended. It happened also, fortunately enough, that Gouverneur Morris was not Minister at this time. There is, however, one point that still remains in embryo, and which, among other things, serves to shew the ignorance of Washington treaty-makers, and their inattention to preexisting treaties, when they were employing themselves in framing or ratifying the new treaty with England. The second article of the treaty of commerce between the United States and France says: "The most christian king and the United States engage mutually, not to grant any particular favour to other nations in respect of commerce and navigation that shall not immediately become common to the other party, who shall enjoy the same favour freely, if the concession was freely made, or on allowing the same compensation if the concession was conditional." All the concessions, therefore, made to England by Jay's treaty are, through the medium of this second article in the pre-existing treaty, made to France, and become engrafted into the treaty with France, and can be exercised by her as a matter of right, the same as by England. Jay's treaty makes a concession to England, and that unconditionally, of seizing naval stores in American ships, and condemning them as contraband. It makes also a concession to England to seize provisions and _other articles_ in American ships. _Other articles are all other articles_, and none but an ignoramus, or something worse, would have put such a phrase into a treaty. The condition annexed in this case is, that the provisions and other articles so seized, are to be paid for at a price to be agreed upon. Mr. Washington, as President, ratified this treaty after he knew the British Government had recommended an indiscriminate seizure of provisions and all other articles in American ships; and it is now known that those seizures were made to fit out the expedition going to Quiberon Bay, and it was known before hand that they would be made. The evidence goes also a good way to prove that Jay and Grenville understood each other upon that subject. Mr. Pinckney,(1) when he passed through France on his way to Spain, spoke of the recommencement of the seizures as a thing that would take place. 1 Gen. Thomas Pinckney, U. S. Minister to England.-- _Editor._