Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

The Gazette.
PHILADELPHIA,
TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE 5

THE DISPATCHES
From our Envoys at Paris, this day communicated, by the President of the United States, to both houses of Congress, consist of a letter dated on the 9th of March last, enclosing minutes of two conferences, obtained at the instance of the Envoys, on the 2d and 4th (or 6th*) of the same month, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. At the first conference, General Pinckney introduced the conversation, by expressing the anxiety of the American government and Envoys to remove the subsisting differences between the two countries. He said that many inadmissible propositions for effecting that object, had been received by them through Messrs. X. and Y. and that they had waited upon the minister, to know whether other means might be devised to obtain so desirable an end. In answer M. Talleyrand said that the Directory were extremely wounded by the speech of General Washington, when about to retire from office, and by the first and last speech of Mr. Adams; and that explanations were required of the Envoys; and that, previous to treating with them, the Directory expected some proof on the part of the United States of a friendly disposition. Here M. Talleyrand alluded very intelligibly to a loan General Pinckney having intimated that a loan would exceed their powers M. Talleyrand drew a distinction between acting contrary to instructions and acting in a case where they were silent, and urged that in the latter case it was their duty to use their discretion for the public good. He said the principal objection of the American government to a loan must be its tendency to draw it out of a neutral situation, and remarked that there were several ways of obviating such an effect; such as a reliance on the secrecy of France, disguising the loan, making it payable by distant installments and France raising present supplies upon the credit of it.-- To this it was answered, that they conceived their instructions did not admit of a loan; that the United States had resolved faithfully to maintain their neutrality; that they would do nothing in secret which if known would arrange them among the belligerent powers; that as they could not, if leagued with France, furnish either men or ships of war, and money being the only thing that would be asked of them, to furnish money was in fact to make war. The minister repeated the necessity there was of proving our friendship for the Republic by some immediate aid, or by something which might avail them. In the course of the conversation the minister complained of the Envoys not having visited him, and pretended that the original favourable disposition of the Directory had been a good deal altered by the coldness and distance which the Envoys had observed; because they had not made private visits to him and said he conceived their not having had an audience of the directory ought not to have prevented it. General Marshall told him, that their seeing the Directory or not, was an object of no sort of concern to them, but that it was their opinion, that until their public character was in some degree recognized, they could not take upon themselves to act as ministers. The minister said that was very true, but that, they might see him as private individuals, and discuss the objects of difference between the two nations.

At the second conference on the 4th (or 6th) the Envoys observed that they had previously attended to the conversation they had had with the minister; that the propositions he had suggested appeared to them substantially the same with those made by Messrs. X. & Y: and they explicitly declared that in addition to those propositions if acceded to, amounting to a declaration of war against Great-Britain, their instructions were express, not to stipulate any aids to France, either directly or indirectly during the war.

The conference on the part of the minister chiefly consisted of a repetition of the remarks and propositions he had made on the 2d of the month. . The Envoys several times told the minister that if it would be agreeable to the Directory two of them would return to America to receive the instructions of the Government on the actual situation of things, but they were unable to draw any reply from him. Thus ended the conference.

* It is uncertain on which of these days the last conference was held.