The consular convention of 1788 had become an issue during the April elections in Massachusetts. Opponents of Jonathan Mason, a Federalist candidate for a seat in the state senate, accused him of having harmed American interests when, as a U.S. senator in February 1801, he voted with the majority to remove the second article of the Convention of 1800 before ratifying that document. The second article provided for negotiations to settle Americans’ claims against France, but also anticipated talks about restoring the 1778 treaty of alliance, the treaty of amity and commerce of that year, and the 1788 consular convention. The Palladium of Boston defended the abrogation of the treaty of alliance and the consular convention, declaring that the latter was TJ’s creation “in a moment of blind confidence and ardent fondness for France.” The “unparalleled” consular convention, the newspapers’s editors contended, “provided for a French Judiciary in every State, independent of the authority of our Government or Courts. The pretensions of the French Consuls, and the embarrassment they created, are well remembered” (New-England Palladium, 29 Mch., 1 Apr.; Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, Washington, D.C., 1931–48, 8 vols. description ends , 2:458–9; Vol. 33:22n). TJ may have prepared these notes about the creation of the consular convention for Joshua Wingate, Jr., the chief clerk of the War Department, who was Henry Dearborn’s son-in-law. In correspondence with TJ, Dearborn referred to his daughter as Mrs. Wingate, and Joshua Wingate was the person TJ was most likely to refer to as simply Mr. Wingate, with no first name, as he did in recording this document. Wingate, the son of a prominent resident of Hallowell, Maine, and the grandson of former New Hampshire congressman Paine Wingate, later entered politics in Maine (William H. Smith, “Gen. Henry Dearborn: A Genealogical Sketch,” Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, 3 [1886], 6–7; Vol. 36:200n; Vol. 38:296–7n; Dearborn to TJ, 28 Aug. 1803, two letters; Thomas Paine to TJ, 25 Jan. 1805).

When John Jay, as secretary for foreign affairs, asked TJ in 1786 to negotiate a revision of the 1784 consular convention that Congress had declined to ratify, TJ first requested new instructions, which Jay sent in July 1787. After completing the negotiations in November 1788, TJ sent Jay the new convention along with printed copies of a side-by-side comparison of its articles with those of the rejected 1784 convention (Vol. 10:430–1; Vol. 11:31, 627–9; Vol. 14:xxxiv, 56–8, 66–92, 121–6, 178n).

changes however were effected: the earlier convention would have given consular officials “a full and entire immunity for their person, their papers and their houses.” The 1788 convention gave immunity only to “their chancery and the papers which shall be therein contained.” The new agreement also had a clause making consuls subject to the laws of the land “as the natives are,” a provision not found in the earlier instrument. Under the convention of 1784, consuls would have had the power to arrest passengers as well as deserted seamen and to sequester or send back vessels. The 1788 convention allowed for the arrest of deserters, but not of passengers, and had no provision for the seizure or sending back of ships (JCC description begins Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, D.C., 1904–37, 34 vols. description ends , 31:727, 732; Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, Washington, D.C., 1931–48, 8 vols. description ends , 2:230, 237).

indelibility of the character of subject: an article of the unratified convention declared that persons of either nation “shall not lose, for any cause whatever, in the respective domains and states, the quality of subjects of the country of which they originally were, conformably to the eleventh article of the treaty of amity and commerce” of 1778. That article of the treaty, which concerned the status of individuals living in the other country’s jurisdiction, stated that nothing in the treaty would alter “the laws made or that may be made hereafter in France against Emigrations, which shall remain in all their Force and Vigour” (JCC description begins Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, D.C., 1904–37, 34 vols. description ends , 31:734–5; Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, Washington, D.C., 1931–48, 8 vols. description ends , 2:11–12).

innovations in the laws of evidence: under the unratified convention, if a consul wanted deserters seized, “no tribunals, judges and officers whatsoever, shall in any manner whatever take cognizance of the complaints which the said sailors and deserters may make.” To get custody of deserters under the 1788 convention, consuls must “address themselves to the courts, judges, and officers competent, and shall demand the said deserters in writing, proving by an exhibition of the registers of the vessel or ship’s roll that those men were part of the said crews” (JCC description begins Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, D.C., 1904–37, 34 vols. description ends , 31:732–3; Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, Washington, D.C., 1931–48, 8 vols. description ends , 2:237–8).

The 1788 convention was to be in force for 12 years from the exchange of ratifications. The 1784 convention contained no limitation on its term. The Senate ratified the new convention in July 1789 (same, 241, 242; JCC description begins Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, D.C., 1904–37, 34 vols. description ends , 31:735).