But in a letter to Hammond he stated that the measures could not be retrospective. In the first days of the war, French citizens, duly commissioned by the authorities of their country, had captured British vessels. It was impossible for the United States to rescue those vessels from the captors. All that could be done was to prevent the repetition of such an incident and to order the departure of all French privateers from the ports of the United States. It was fine legal reasoning, not without some of that hairsplitting for which Jefferson reproached Randolph. Whether Randolph had a hand or not in the reaching of that decision is another question. Jefferson indorsed it in transmitting it both to Hammond and Genet. Another proposition of Genet did not meet with more favorable approval. The Republic was hard pressed for money, and the new plenipotentiary had been requested to make every possible effort "to obtain payment in one lump sum of all the annuities coming to France, taking the debt in produce if necessary, or changing it into bonds to be sold to the public." To this Jefferson was unequivocally opposed, although he referred the President to Hamilton. He recommended payment in advance of the installments due for the year, but strongly objected to changing the form of the debt.[298] He wrote, furthermore, to Gouverneur Morris to acquaint him with the situation and to request him "to prevent any such proposition in the future from being brought forward."[299] As a matter of fact, although Jefferson expressed pious and fervent wishes for the success of the French, I cannot see that he officially did much to further their cause. He was not even pleased by the agitation and propaganda in their behalf carried on in America by enthusiastic patriots. This appears very clearly in a letter to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, which, better than any official document, indicates his state of mind at the end of June, 1793: The French have been guilty of great errors in their conduct towards other nations, not only in insulting uselessly all crowned heads, but endeavoring to force liberty on their neighbors in their own form. They seem to be correcting themselves on the latter point; the war between them and England embarrasses our government daily and immensely. The predilection of our citizens for France renders it very difficult to suppress their attempts to cruise against the English on the ocean, and to do justice to the latter in cases where they are entitled to it.[300] Monroe had sent him a long dissertation on the proclamation of neutrality which he judged both "unpolitick and unconstitutional"; for, if the President "possesses the right to say we shall be neutral, he might say we should not be."[301]