1. For French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet’s inquiry about the sale of prizes in his letter to Pickering of 14 July, see Pickering to GW, 15 July, n.1. Pickering replied to Adet on this date: “I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th instant in answer to mine of the 1st. … And you enquire whether the President has given orders to prevent the sale of prizes carried into the ports of the United States by vessels of the Republic, or privateers armed under its authority? and on what foundation this prohibition rests? I will be very frank, sir, in answering these questions, after making some preliminary observations.

“The question about the sale of prizes is not a new one. It was agitated, and the point of right settled, in the year 1793. Among the State papers communicated to Congress at the close of that year, and which have been published, is a letter from Mr Jefferson to Mr Morris dated the 16th of August, in which is the following passage: ‘The 17th article of our treaty (meaning with France) leaves armed vessels free to conduct whithersoever they please, the ships & goods taken from their enemies, without paying any duty, and to depart and be conducted freely to the places expressed in their commissions, which the captain shall be obliged to shew. It is evident that this article does not contemplate a freedom to sell their prizes here; but, on the contrary, a departure to some other place, always to be expressed in their commission, where their validity is to be finally adjudged. In such case, it would be as unreasonable to demand duties on the goods they had taken from an enemy, as it would be on the cargo of a merchant vessel touching in our ports for refreshment or advices. And against this the article provides. But the armed vessels of France have been also admitted to land & sell their prize goods here for consumption; in which case it is as reasonable they should pay duties as the goods of a merchantman landed and sold for consumption. They have, however, demanded, and as a matter of right; to sell them free of duty; a right, they say, given by this article of the treaty, though the article does not give the right to sell at all.’

“It is plain that France understood this 17th article in the same sense. And accordingly, in her treaty of commerce with Great Britain, in 1786, she entered into a stipulation which in case of a war between the U. States & Great Britain, would have prevented the vessels of the U. States from arming as privateers or selling their prizes, in the ports of France. In like manner the United States, in their commercial treaty with Great-Britain, agreed on a similar prohibition. Indeed the 24th article of the latter treaty is but a translation of the 16th between France & Great-Britain.

“Under this view of the case, sir, as soon as provision was made on both sides to carry into effect the treaty between the U. States & Great Britain, it behoved the Government of the former to countermand the permission formerly given to French Privateers to sell their prizes in our ports. Such sales, you have seen, the U. States had always a right to prohibit; and by the abovementioned stipulation this right became a duty. These, sir, are the foundations of the orders which have been given to prevent the sale of the prizes lately carried into Boston by French privateers, to which you refer; it being understood that the prizes were British property. Those orders have since been made general, and communicated to the Collectors in all the ports of the United States. But at present, those orders are confined to prizes brought into our ports by privateers” (DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters).

2. The Gazette of the United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser for 18 July reprinted from the Columbian Centinel (Boston) for 13 July news of “a resolution on the subject of the sale of prizes, presented by Barbe de Marbois, to the Council of Ancients” on 20 April “in which he informs, that the Committee had carefully analysed the various treaties subsisting between France and other nations; among other things it declares, that the treaty of commerce, made in 1778, between France and the United States, forbids the admiralty officers of American ports, into which the French may conduct their prizes, cognizance of the validity of said prizes, and so reciprocally: but this same article adds, that they may freely depart from the port where the captors were fitted out—And the spirit of the treaty is, that judgment upon the prizes belongs to the tribunals of the nation to which the captors belong, but not to the Consuls.” The item continued: “Speaking of prizes carried into neutral ports, Barbe Marbois proceeds, ‘The captors and the captured, after a stay longer or shorter according to the spirit of existing treaties, must again proceed to sea; and the prizes must be conducted to the ports of the nation of the captor, and it is there they ought to be tried. This, Colleagues, is the reciprocity which we demand; and it is thus we will fulfil the duties of friendship and benevolence towards our allies, and even towards nations with which we are only at peace.’” The Columbian Centinel for 20 July 1796 printed more extensive excerpts from the speech of François de Barbé-Marbois, who had come to the United States in 1779 as secretary of the legation with French minister La Luzerne (see GW to Lafayette, 30 Sept. 1779, in Papers, Revolutionary War Series, description begins W. W. Abbot et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series. 25 vols. to date. Charlottesville, Va., 1985–. description ends 22:557–63; see also Chase, Letters of Barbé-Marbois description begins Eugene Parker Chase, trans. and ed. Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The Letters of François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois during his Residence in the United States as Secretary of the French Legation, 1779–1785. New York, 1929. description ends ).