It pledged the
United States to guarantee France in the possession of her West Indies,
to admit her ships with prizes to American ports, to keep out those
of the enemy, and to prohibit the enemy from using American ports to
fit out privateers. From this last provision, some friends of France
deduced the opinion that it tacitly gave her permission to fit out
privateers by denying the right to her enemies.
Hamilton and others, who thought the French movement, begun for the
sake of liberty, was deteriorating into a frenzied propaganda
destructive of rights and property, insisted that the change of
government in France had abrogated all claims which the alliance gave
to monarchical France; that, even if this were not so, the United
States was pledged to aid her only in a defensive war, and this war
with England was entirely offensive on her part; that to give aid to
the maddened revolutionists was to identify ourselves irrevocably with
destructive fanatics, bloody regicides, and wild propagandists. These
zealots, they said, had already pledged themselves to treat as enemies
any people "who, refusing or renouncing liberty and equality, are
desirous of preserving their prince or privileged castes, or of entering
into an accommodation with them.
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