5891. NEUTRALITY PROCLAMATION, History of.—[further continued].
The proclamation as
first proposed was to have been a declaration
of neutrality. It was opposed on these grounds.
1. That a declaration of neutrality was a
declaration there should be no war, to which
the Executive was not competent. 2. That
it would be better to hold back the declaration
of neutrality, as a thing worth something to the
powers at war; that they would bid for it, and
we might reasonably ask a price, the broadest
privileges of neutral nations. The first objection
was so far respected as to avoid inserting
the term neutrality, and the drawing the instrument
was left to E. R. [Edmund Randolph].—
To James Madison. Washington ed. iii, 591.
Ford ed., vi, 315.
(1793)
