With the same unanimity, the President was advised to receive a
minister from the republic of France; but, on the question respecting
a qualification to his reception, a division was perceived. The
secretary of state and the attorney general were of opinion, that no
cause existed for departing in the present instance from the usual
mode of acting on such occasions. The revolution in France, they
conceived, had produced no change in the relations between the two
nations; nor was there any thing in the alteration of government, or
in the character of the war, which would impair the right of France to
demand, or weaken the duty of the United States faithfully to comply
with the engagements which had been solemnly formed.

The secretaries of the treasury, and of war, held a different opinion.
Admitting in its fullest latitude the right of a nation to change its
political institutions according to its own will, they denied its
right to involve other nations, _absolutely and unconditionally_, in
the consequences of the changes which it may think proper to make.
They maintained the right of a nation to absolve itself from the
obligations even of real treaties, when such a change of circumstances
takes place in the internal situation of the other contracting party,
as so essentially to alter the existing state of things, that it may
with good faith be pronounced to render a continuance of the connexion
which results from them, disadvantageous or dangerous.

They reviewed the most prominent of those transactions which had
recently taken place in France, and noticed the turbulence, the fury,
and the injustice with which they were marked. The Jacobin club at
Paris, whose influence was well understood, had even gone so far,
previous to the meeting of the convention, as to enter into measures
with the avowed object of purging that body of those persons,