To George Washington from Edmund Randolph, 24 July 1795
From Edmund Randolph
Philadelphia July 24. 1795.
9 o’clock A.M.
Sir
You will see in Bache’s paper of this morning names upon the committee for preparing the address to you, of a very respectable kind.1 Whether they were present at the meeting, and whether they will act, I cannot yet learn. Mr McKean is understood, however, to be acrimonious against the treaty beyond measure.
I hinted in a past letter, that there was something mysterious in one part of the business. What I allude to is; that the advice, given to you from New-York, as to the witholding of a ratification, until the order for seizing provisions, was rescinded, does not appear to have been circulated among the particular friends of the gentleman, from whom the advice came2—Permit me, sir, to suggest the propriety of knowing, how far the same views have been taken by others. I have the honor to be sir with the most respectful and affectionate attachment yr mo. ob. serv.
Edm: Randolph.
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. The Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia) of this date printed the proceedings of the Philadelphia meeting on 23 July that passed resolutions in opposition to the Jay Treaty and appointed a committee of fifteen to prepare a memorial to GW on the subject. The committee included the fourteen signers of the resulting memorial (Philadelphia Citizens to GW, 25 July) plus Jared Ingersoll.
2. Randolph voiced this suspicion in his letter to GW of 20 July, in reaction to Alexander Hamilton’s opinion about ratification of the Jay Treaty. According to Oliver Wolcott, Jr., in a letter written to John Marshall on 9 June 1806, Hamilton urged GW “to ratify the Treaty as advised by the Senate,” and send it to the U.S. minister in London “with an instruction, not to exchange the ratifications, till the provision order was rescinded; or if the order had existed, but was revoked at the time, then to accompany the ratification, with a remonstrance against the principle on which the order was supposed to be founded” (CtHi: Oliver Wolcott, Jr., Papers). For the problematic provision order, see GW to Hamilton, 7 July, n.3.