‘An elderly lady who had unfortunately fallen into bad company'
The Wars of the Coalitions (1775-1815) impacted the international relaÂtions of Great Britain and the United States to very different degrees. In the 1790s American diplomacy kept the nation out of war, saving only the undeclared ‘Quasi-War’ with France (1798-1800) and an ongoing low- intensity conflict in the Mediterranean.
When North African pirates threatÂened American merchant shipping, Washington’s cabinet could offer few military options. Annual payments of ‘twelve thousand Algerine sequins in maritime stores’ - the treaty was concluded 5 September 1795 - was the first of these bad bargains. Given the primitive state of the United States Navy, military necessity required this sacrifice of national honour.1 For Great Britain, the decade of the 1790s rapidly degenerated into a life-and-death struggle for survival against an aggressive French republic that was, in that decade, too often successful in its varied ambitions.Two case studies centre this chapter’s discussion. When a run on the Bank of England required intervention by Parliament, legislators in the House of Commons sprang into action, giving the events leading up to this nearÂdisaster their intense - if long-delayed - scrutiny. According to a commentaÂtor in 1829, what preceded the events of 26 February 1797 was the lapse of ‘all the checks of control and all the means of correction’.2 Pitt dismantled a system by which commissioners - having gathered and analysed financial data - reported this data to that body, without prompting from members of the House. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Member for Stafford) assessed the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s malfeasance in the convertibility crisis (1797) that crowned the previous decade’s mismanagement. In the playwright’s well-turned phrase Pitt had seduced the Bank of England, ‘an elderly lady in the City, of great credit and long standing who had unfortunately fallen into bad company’.3
The second case study traces events in the United States. Through epiÂsodes dated to 1789, 1800-01 and in December 1801 the United States Senate evolved its body of procedural rules governing ratification of treaÂties. The Senate initially approved a mini-code of procedures in April 1789, 96 ‘The average price of peace and war’ when the two new legislative assemblies in the federal government organÂised themselves. But these rules were silent on the Senate’s consideration of treaties submitted to it for ratification. President Washington outlined his views in August 1789 and in considerable detail. In 1800-01, the Senate approved procedures governing its ratification process. At the opening of the Seventh Congress, the Senate rewrote its code of rules to include the new procedures; this Senate adopted this code in December 1801.