European Assessments of the Constitution

Europeans in America were some of the keenest analysts of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. Writing to inform rather than persuade, their letters are succinct and free of the overwrought rhetoric that characterized much of the contemporary American debate. Their analysis was valuable because European newspapers printed little concerning American affairs, except in Great Britain, where the press regularly denigrated America as anarchic and lawless in an attempt to dissuade emigration.

While more objective than Americans, Europeans were hardly disinterested. Britain, France, and Spain each had their particular reasons to closely watch the ratification debate.

The British government wanted to assure that American debtors would pay their prewar debts with accrued interest to their British creditors. Still smarting from the loss of its lucrative colonies, the British government refused to send diplomats to America and established a restrictive commercial policy, believing that American consumers would return to their prewar trading patterns without any British incentives.

The French government wanted the Confederation Congress to repay wartime loans made by King Louis XVI and Dutch bankers. The French government had backed the Dutch loans, making it responsible to repay them if Congress defaulted. The French also wanted to improve commercial relations with the United States while diminishing the commercial connection between the United States and Britain. Of paramount importance, however, the French wanted to prevent a rapprochement—or worse, an alliance—between America and its former mother country.

The Spanish government wanted the Confederation Congress to repay wartime loans made by the Spanish king and to negotiate a commercial treaty. Most importantly, Spain wanted to protect its colonial North American boundaries from the avaricious land-hungry Americans. To maintain its borders, the Spanish government prohibited Americans from navigating the Mississippi River and argued that America’s southern border should be much further north than specified in the 1783 Treaty of Peace with Great Britain.

The following documents containing European assessments of the Constitution have been taken from The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. Several of these documents reference John Jay, who had become the Confederation’s secretary for foreign affairs in 1785. Jay not only conducted all diplomatic matters, but much of the confederation’s domestic agenda as well. At the time, Jay was considered by all as America’s de facto prime minister. No foreign diplomat could approach Congress without first dealing with Secretary Jay. For more European assessments of the United States in the early days of the republic see Mary Giunta’s The Emerging Nation, which is freely available online via hathitrust.org.