What Mr. Murray is still dubious of has been very explicitly declared,
even before the President's message to Congress of the 3d Messidor [21st
June] last was known in France. I had written it to Mr. Gerry, namely,
on the 24th Messidor and 4th Thermidor; I did repeat it to him before he
sat out. A whole paragraph of my letter to you of the 11th Fructidor, of
which Mr. Murray has a copy, is devoted to develop still more the fixed
determination of the French Government. According to these bases, you
were right to assert that whatever plenipotentiary the Government of
the United States might send to France to put an end to the existing
differences between the two countries would be undoubtedly received
with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and
powerful nation.

I can not persuade myself, Citizen, that the American Government need
any further declarations from us to induce them, in order to renew
the negotiations, to adopt such measures as would be suggested to
them by their desire to bring the differences to a peaceable end. If
misunderstandings on both sides have prevented former explanations from
reaching that end, it is presumable that, those misunderstandings being
done away, nothing henceforth will bring obstacles to the reciprocal
dispositions. The President's instructions to his envoys at Paris, which
I have only known by the copy given you by Mr. Murray, and received by
me the 21st Messidor [9th July], announce, if they contain the whole of
the American Government's intentions, dispositions which could only
have added to those which the Directory has always entertained; and,
notwithstanding the posterior acts of that Government, notwithstanding
the irritating and almost hostile measures they have adopted, the
Directory has manifested its perseverance in the sentiments which are
deposited both in my correspondence with Mr. Gerry and in my letter to
you of the 11th Fructidor, and which I have hereinbefore repeated in the