The U.S. Constitution or how the west was won.

Preamble
The Constitution-The writing of it.
The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments)-Why they weren't in the body of the Constitution.

Preamble

The Constitution of the United States is a type of contract. I should know since I wrote it. (More specifically it is a compact.)

Here is how I got suckered into writing it.

First I got suckered into writing the Declaration of Independence which I was a fool to allow that to happen. Of course I swore that I would never let anything like that happen again. After the revolution the states got together when I had to take care of Monticello for weeks at a time because of my wife's chronic illness.

They realized the truth of the matter and that was this: England would look for any conflict between the states as an excuse to take sides. Then they would enter with troops to help one of the states and then proceed to take over all the states. The other thing they might do is take two states with different or opposing laws and say that the difference or conflict meant that one of the states was essentially lawless. Again that would give England an excuse to invade one state and then eventually take over all the other states.

So in any of these situations it meant that there needed to be a relative consistency in the laws from state to state.

Also, none of the laws could very strongly conflict with any English laws or they would also declare us lawless or pirates, etc.

So Congress needed a lawyer that could make sure there were no conflicts that would give England that very big excuse to come back. They said, 'Well whoever we decide on is a dead man if the English find out who he is and then come back.' So one delegate essentially said: 'Since Thomas Jefferson has already screwed himself completely by writing the Declaration of Independence we should appoint him. They can only hang him once and that way we will still have one decent lawyer left'. Most of them agreed that this was the best thing to do. (I can't recall who the other lawyer was but at first they were going to appoint him.)

During the 1780's we were a loose knit confederation of independent states. So for almost ten years I was the legal advisor to eleven of the thirteen states. Every law they passed I either secretly approved, denied or modified. All proposed legislation and questions were taken by stage to Baltimore. (Stage lines and even the towns at which the letters were put on the stage changed often to prevent English spies from find out.) From Baltimore they were hidden in a person's belongings and taken to another location where a night messenger brought them to Monticello on horseback. I think in wintertime a man in a small sled brought them. The system changed often to prevent spies from finding out.

I had to make sure that there were not any conflicts with England's laws or their legal apparatus. We had to act more English than England in this respect. The states through these years acted as a cauldron into which a thousand laws were placed. From them I determined what worked for the upcoming Federal Government and how to prevent any abuses of government. The main good that came out of this system was that it prevented the states from producing outlandish laws. When one state started to get out of hand and unworkable then the laws in the other states showed the errors of their ways and it showed them how to return to a workable system. Land was cheap so if one state did not change to a more workable system then the people would move to another state. (I am convinced that had France been divided into states then the abuses of their revolution never would have occurred and Napoleon never would have risen to power.)

We were showing the world that we were completely responsible and that the English propaganda about us needing their 'guidance and support' fell on deaf ears in all other countries of the world.

The European treaties read that England could attack a lawless or pirate nation without interference by the other nations of Europe. However, if England attacked a neutral and lawful nation then the other countries could side against the English and even declare war against them.

We were neutral and as long as we were lawful any interference by England would have voided their treaties with other nations. Then those nations would have declared war with England in a heart beat just so they could unify. Then they would have all attacked and taken over England's other valuable real estate like India, Jamaica, Canada, etc.

The main problem was that the smallest conflict with England's laws could be used as a legal basis for an invasion by England. Then the other European nations would not have had a reason to abrogate their treaties with England. England could then have lawfully invaded the states and even had the assistance of the other European nations.

That is the tightrope that we walked.

Also, all the European nations were looking to gain a foothold in America by taking over one of the states so that also had to be taken into account. A perceived of threat by any one of the states might set them off and they were not above exaggeration and downright fabricate stories to gain their desired ends. Hence every state was trying to keep a very low profile so as to be seen as a non threat. That way if the European nations invaded they would invade one of the other states instead of theirs.

England was looking for any excuse to invade the states. Second in line to invade the states was France and third was Spain and forth was the Holy Roman Empire (which I previously and mistakenly often referred to as 'Germany'). We had to change from being just a loose knit group of states to become a tightly controlled group since eventually it was inevitable that something would happen to give those countries an excuse to invade us (and they were looking for any excuse).

We thought the most likely precipitating event would inevitably be that a captain licensed by one of the states would become a pirate. That would be all the reason any European nation would need to invade. We would be said to be licensing and harboring pirates. It was so sensitive a situation that even if we did not know a ship was a pirate ship and it had harbored in any state then it probably would have been enough reason to start a war. All the nations of Europe would be able to say that the states were essentially like Somalia was in in the 1990's or Afghanistan in 2001 when they were harboring al Qaeda terrorists. Then the European countries would have struck in unison with three to five huge European armies and navies. That would have been the end of out little experiment in freedom as we could never have stood up to them.

This is what we were up against when Ben Franklin walked in one day and said 'lets make a nation with a constitution which is totally legal (in England) and then those European 'sons of bitches' can't invade us ever. [He used that term 'son's of bitches' more than any other in his rich vocabulary of profane words which included every known French profanity phrase or innuendo. His profanity was as far ranging as to include Russian and Congolese swear words. Ben knew the 'f..k' word in over 40 languages including 15 from China and Mongolia and was very proud of it.]

Making a country legal was a unique concept but at first I thought it was impossible. So Ben and I sat down immediately and started to see if it could possibly be worked out. You are living the results of our short, less than an hour, brain storming session.

The English kept branding us as brigands and pirates, a nation of 13 lawless states, that needed to be invaded and put back under their yoke. We were going to be more abiding of the England legal system than the English were. By doing so were going to simply remove every reason they had given the world as their excuse to invade us.

That way there was absolutely not one single reason for the English to invade us. You may notice that the Constitution does not speak against the 'Crown' and avoids any animosity towards England. This was the reason for it.

The Constitution

The Constitution was written by me when I was supposed to be in France working hard as the Ambassador.

For me to go to France as Ambassador just to coddle King Louis was ridiculous when I had a huge plantation to take care of in Virginia. The real reason I became the French Ambassador was to make certain there were no loopholes in the Constitution. As the Ambassador to France people complained that I wasn't doing my job because I spent half my time going on hunts in isolated parts of France. Principally it was with one Frenchman and his wife who was highly invested in America. Since we never took an extra woman and it happened so often there were rumors about us three.

His house wasn't too far from the coast as I recall, maybe near Normandy, but anyway from there I would sneak across the channel. There I used the same law libraries that the English barristers would later use to try to find the loopholes in the Constitution which I made absolutely and completely certain did not exist.

The reasons my authorship was kept a secret were many but mainly because there was a bounty on my head already for writing the Declaration of Independence. It's well known that those who signed it had bounties on their heads but all of those bounties combined amounted to less than half the bounty on my head for having written the Declaration of Independence. I wasn't at all comfortable with that bounty so I wasn't about to have another one added to it. That is why my writing the Constitution was kept a secret.

The English channel is not a great barrier to people who are determined to cross it. I got a white wig, a pair of glasses, some different clothes and went across to England undercover to use their law libraries. The English hated Thomas Jefferson more than any 'non-French' person alive. I am proud to say that I had already ruined their entire 'empire scheme' with the results of the Declaration of Independence. I knew that I would have been tortured to death if I had been caught. I had no choice though. I had to use their own library(s) in order to make the Constitution lawful and legal in accordance with all English laws.

We had to make the Constitution legal under the British system of laws and without a single flaw. Otherwise they would declare the Constitution in violation of their laws, hence illegal and then claim that our country was a lawless pirates haven which according to their laws and treaties with the other European Nations they had a right to invade. I was the one that explained how it was necessary to make the Constitution legal under the English laws to the members of the Continental Congress so guess who got to hang the bell on the cat?

Yes, it was the man the English reviled more than any person except the King of France.

It was in England that the records existed which would make the US Constitution a legal contract under the English laws as well as under the laws of the independent colonies and the Continental Congress and also international law. I found out later that the English had found my notes at a library and it matched the phrasing of the Articles of Confederation precisely. Then a few months later the Constitution was signed. They were really upset that the writer of the Constitution had used their own library to make it legal. They were enraged. They knew that one person had written both documents but since they did not know who had written the Articles of Confederation they couldn't figure out who the author of the Constitution was.

To attempt to make a contract of that length and have it still legal under 15 different sets of laws (13 states, the Congress and England), well I must have been out of my mind to attempt such a thing. It worked though.

The main set of laws that were the most important ones to satisfy were the English laws. Being legal under the English legal system meant there was nothing they could legally do about us. Breaking an English law in that document or allowing a pirate to make their home in a US port were about the only ways that we could get 'busted'.

The Constitution was not so much based on the English legal system as such but on the basis of their legal system. It was patterned mainly after indentured servitude contracts and court cases that went back to the 1400's. A man's life depended on these contracts and findings so these rulings were well established in the English legal system. They were so lawful that many of the English laws and especially those relating to human rights were patterned on them. This included the English laws on prisoner rights, capital punishment, Naval impress (draft) laws, some property ownership law and squatters rights.

The logic to not using the 18th century laws of England but using laws that were hundreds of years old was quite simple. In the 14th century and before it was just English laws that had been in effect for about 500 years. Since then the English had taken over Scotland, and Ireland. With those lands came some of their laws. So the laws of England of the 18th century were a combination of English, Scottish and even some Irish laws with a smattering of Welsh laws that had snuck in. The problem was that many of the laws conflicted. It was a mess and all the English had to do was find the worst of those laws and present it in court as evidence that our Constitution was an illegal document and hence our nation was also illegal.

That way they could find us forefathers all guilty of breaking the same English law and declare us felons at large. They were all set and ready to have big show trials to make us examples. The trials would have been covered by all the European Nations and used by those nations to threaten their own colonies into submission. However, what only the French knew was what our defense would have been if the English had managed to get us into court. I would have torn apart their entire corrupted legal system in front of Europe. It would have taken about three weeks for me to prove that England was an illegal piratical nation. It would have enabled all the countries of Europe to legally make war against England.

You had better believe I was going to do it if England had invaded the US and taken us to court.

By basing the Constitution on the basis of the English laws the English could do nothing. Basically if they said the Constitution was illegal they would have destroyed their own system of laws. They would have torn it out by the roots. Over half of the English laws would have been under scrutiny and half of those would have failed the scrutiny.

How could England survive with one forth of their laws invalid? The French would 'then claim that the country was a lawless pirates haven that they had a right to invade under international law', etcetera, etcetera

The Continental Congress signed a secret treaty with France so they would go to war with England if we had been invaded and taken to court. (This was in addition to the Treaty of Alliance.) Once I had proven that England was a pirate nation France was going to invade England's colonies oversea's. Their main target of course was 'French Canada' and then the rest of Canada and then the Caribbean island of Jamaica and other islands. Then all the other European Nations would have attacked England directly, walled off their ports and the Thames with blockades and then they all would have set sail for those rich English overseas colonies that they all wanted to take over.

Taking me to court was no fun.

So I was doing this unprecedented dangerous legal work in the libraries right under the nose of the English legal authorities who were even in charge of those libraries. It was exciting but this outrageous (outrageous because standing at 6' 4" I stood out like a sore thumb) James Bond character even had to invent his own nifty little spying gadgets like the one on this page.

While I was invading the English law libraries our forefathers were patiently waiting back in America for me to send them both the Constitution and the assurance that by signing it they could not be convicted of breaking any English laws in the courts of England or any other country that might ever want to invade us.

The English had about five times the soldiers in Canada as they had there during the revolution doing nothing except waiting at the US border for their marching orders. Also, the English had sent to the states (and Canada) somewhere between five and fifteen thousand ex army regulars as 'sleeper cells' pretending to be settlers. Caches of guns were often confiscated from ships entering the US.*.

The English were ready to invade so no short cuts could be taken with the Constitution. It had to be written in England. Hence, me or anyone else staying in America and writing the Constitution was simply out of the question.

When I finished writing the Constitution and sent it to America to be signed I went to the court of King Louis the XVI and tell him to get ready. French arms and supplies were placed on about 100 ships and they waited for the British to declare the Constitution illegal under English law. If the English had sailed off to attack and invade the US the French would have attacked England and 'claimed that the country was a lawless pirates haven that they had a right to invade' etcetera, etcetera

The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments)

Yes, I know you were taught in your history class that they were added to get the individual states to sign the Constitution but that doesn't make any sense. The amendments were wanted by everyone so why make them amendments and not part of the Constitution? If you look at them you cannot find any that tilt toward or favored one state over another. The desire for them was divided equally across all the states and across the entire population.

The Bill of Rights were actually those parts of the Constitution that might have come in conflict with the laws of the European Nations and that would have allowed them to declare war on us, invade us, etcetera, etcetera.

The radical ideas that various countries objected to became the first ten Amendments.

I made them amendments so they could be easily and temporarily removed by another amendment and 2/3 vote of congress just like a hundred years later the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment which was Prohibition.

That way the body of the Constitution would be left intact, whole and complete. It would have only taken a new amendment and a 2/3 vote of congress to replace it.

This concept was without precedence and it was a totally new way of using amendments. These amendments were totally unexpected and it threw all of Europe into a quandary trying to find legal ways (not prohibited by their own laws or treaties) to circumvent them. England alone had hundreds of lawyers pouring over law books trying to find a loophole. There were no loopholes as I made sure of that.

Yes, it was my idea.

Why make it so that the Amendments could be repealed with a vote? There were several reasons.

One was this. There was a distinct possibility that a European nation would have made one of the amendments an issue and started to rile up the rest of Europe in order to prepare for a multi nation invasion of the U.S. If and when that happened we would have quickly passed an amendment that would have canceled the objectionable amendment, then back date it and say to Europe, 'You are right. Last month we found out that amendment did not work and eliminated it. Thank you very much.' Then after things cooled down in Europe we would reinstate it by passing yet a third amendment.

Another reason I did it this way is a lot more complex. It was this. If a war got started we might need to remove one amendment so that we could align with another nation. For example: If we needed to align with England who had strict anti-gun laws we might need to remove the Second Amendment for awhile so that the English rulers could justify it to the English. Making freedom of Religion an amendment was mainly for Catholic France as they often used the anti protestant platform to sell their wars with the English. Our freedom of religion made it a very difficult sell to the French people so being able to remove it was important.

How it was intended to work is even more complex. We had figured out how to get all the nations of Europe to gang up any nation that invaded us. Or as an alternative start WWI and let the Europeans destroy each other instead of us. It wasn't needed. They did that anyway.

Most Americans don't realize that the Treaty of Alliance which allowed France to enter the Revolutionary War on our side did not terminate with the end of the Revolutionary war. It was in effect and hanging over the head of England for ~20 years until it was abrogated in 1799. During that entire period of time France was waiting and eager to defend us and that means they would have attacked England itself as soon as the English fleet sailed over the horizon. As long as we had broken no English laws all of France's treaties and alignments held with the other European powers. Now it gets to the good part. That we were neutral and had broken no laws meant that England would have been breaking treaties by attacking a neutral country and that would violate the treaties they had with other nations. Then all those other countries that wanted a piece of English territory (that was about 11 countries including Scandinavian countries like Norway who wanted Canada) could go to war with the English. They would all leap into the fray like in WWI only this time they would have loved to gang up on England and stripped her of all of her colonies from Quebec to India. Then England would not be able to say 'the sun never sets on the British Empire'. (Germany would have probably gained the most.)

So England had a lot to loose if they messed up and invaded us 'improperly'. Basically people on our end could have messed it up easily by giving the Europeans a legal reason to invade. Even a sailor accidentally firing a cannon at the wrong time and near the wrong country's ship could have brought it all down on the U.S. if that country decided the cannon shot was a declaration of war by the US.****

If one of the countries had issues regarding our constitution it was always with one of the amendments because we had set it up that way. That way we could suspend that amendment with a vote or remove it temporarily. It was not an issue for us but for some countries they were. Italy and even Spain were so entrenched in Catholicism that our freedom of religion (the First Amendment) could have become an issue within the country or in their treaties so we could remove the thorny issue for awhile in ten minutes with a vote of Congress. I had three ways it could be modified by another amendment if Spain or Italy wanted to join in.

I had almost 300 amendments to the Constitution written up that we could have used for different countries and different situations so that we would prevail.***** I hear on CNN when a congressman ask if there is a contingency plan and I laugh a bit. I'll be frank, I had over 350 contingency plans ready for use.

* We usually kept the confiscation secret. That way the captain of the smuggling ship or others got accused of stealing them. The English did not know who to trust.

The guns came in through New York Harbor of all places and Boston and the Chesapeake Bay. There were over 500 confiscated and do you want to know what was the craziest part of it? They were only smooth bore muskets. Had they sent money instead they could have bought twice as many of the more dreaded long range Kentucky rifles for the same amount of money! We had no use for those confiscated 500 muskets since they were so inaccurate. So for years they just sat around gathering dust.

I recall that there was about 40 barrels of powder in only one confiscation so that meant there were cannons somewhere that had already made it through. Cannons are always shipped before the powder since they are more important. The powder can be brought in many ways and can be manufactured or bought if need be.

In 1790 the French started to prepare to invade the US. Then is when those 500 smoothbore muskets disappeared. That is why in 1791 the rebel attacks in French Haiti that had been going on unsuccessful for 40 years and had left tens of thousands dead, suddenly got kicked up five notches due to the appearance of 500 muskets in the hands of rebels. It was called the Slave Rebellion and it lead to the liberation of Haiti and they tossed the French right out on their ear and out of their richest province.

We eventually got the best deal in the style of buying Manhattan Island for $24 in beads when we purchased Louisiana for $7 Million. That was when Napoleon had to hold his 'moving out of the western hemisphere' sale all because some damn planter in Virginia shipped 20 crates labeled 'twill wool dresses' to Le Borgne, Haiti.

**Just read this 1724 account:.

...It was a utopia. According to Johnson’s account: Ours is a brave, a just, an innocent, and a noble cause; the cause of liberty. I advise a white ensign, with liberty painted in the fly, and if you like the motto, A Deo a Libertate, For God and Liberty, as an emblem of our uprightness and resolution.… The men, who lent an attentive ear, cry’d, Liberty, Liberty; we are freemen. Here

Sounds positively patriotic but this excerpt is from Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book, 'A General History of the Pyrates' and was about the pirate colony Libertalia on the Indian Ocean Island of Madagascar. That certainly wasn't the USA by a long shot. You can probably start to see what we were up against.

The Europeans hated such words as those the pirates used like 'liberty'. They had united to locate and wipe out the main pirate colonies about 60 or so years before and were again becoming a big problem in both the Indian Ocean and the Mediteranian. So every time we used that French word 'liberty' the minds of most Europeans made a very short leap to thinking of us Americans as being pirates. You can tell there was an uphill battle that we had to fight just to get out from under the yoke and evil legacy that pirates gave the world before we could freely think of establishing the United States of America.

One of the ways we did it was not to use words that got Europeans upset like 'liberty'. Instead we used the less inflammatory word 'freedom' as in my statement: 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.' but we always really mean 't liberty'. The word freedom was technically worse than the word 'liberty' but not in the minds of most Europeans. Freedom allows for the right to enforce your will on others as the pirates did but liberty doesn't include it. As I stated on the first page:

It was always about liberty and not about freedom as most American's now demand with curt slogans. Liberty is a state of existence. Freedom concerns actions and is anarchy in the truest sense of the word, no matter how good the intentions. Freedoms were all different. Some curtailed other people rights and some didn't. Freedom of speech was one right that a person could always walk away from if they did not like hearing it exercised. The same with religion.

The whole concept of the revolution was to be rid of the ruling by a few, be it pirates or the rulers of Europe who thought they had the right to dominate other people. However, the concept of liberty was so new that there were not any other words that even existed describing it besides 'freedom' except 'independence' but that's just freedom spelled differently.

We appear to have been too effective and blurred the meaning of the word freedom with liberty until now people confuse the definitions and think they mean the same. That confuses the issue of right and wrong to no end.

***In one scenario we would have had to present our case in the courts of four countries at once to start WWI.

One thing that warring countries have done throughout history is to sign a peace treaty with their enemy. Then they would rebuild their army, get another country that they were aligned with by treaty to declare war on the enemy and then come to that countries aid. That way they could restart the war without breaking the peace treaty. To prevent this from occurring the countries would put a certain stipulation in the initial treaty. In one case there were five countries that had signed a treaty. They put in it that if a neutral country (one not involved in the treaty) went to war with any of the five countries and one of the five signers had gone to their assistance then none of the other signing countries could also join in the fighting. This prevented several or even four of the countries from ganging up on one of them (and the neutral country)..

In this case if one of these five countries went to war with us they would know that only one country could come to our aid.

If we were invaded then we were going to simultaneously submit a request for aid to the other four countries that had signed the treaty. Since all four would be presented with the request at the same time then those countries could each say there were no other countries on our side. Then, since all four countries would then declare war at the exact same time it adhered to all the terms of the treaty.

That way all four countries could go to war on our side. King Louis of France who was prepared to stand up for America's independence alone even against Austria-Prussia (though it would have been a losing battle) relished this 'loophole' which would have tripled the forces on our side. When Madison figured it out and I sent that information to France the King of France said it was declared brilliant and the King of France wanted to make Madison a subject of France. He was offered a tremendous amount of money just to review treaties for France but thought it might have been a conflict of interest.

****This is how we could have started a World War. George Washington's had four agents, two teams, as trusted gun crews on English ships. They had U.S. made detonators with timed delay fuses which were to be put into the barrel of cannons behind the cannon ball which were not quite seated all the way down. Immediately before before the ship pulled up next to a neutral ship they were to ram the ball the rest of the way to seat it and that would ignite the 2 minute phosphorus fuse which then burned a bit like a modern match being lit. Then as they pulled up beside the neutral ship, BOOM, England would be at war with a neutral country. That would bring into play all those clauses in treaties that allowed everyone to side with the neutral country. It's all based on the fact that the European's hated with a passion any harming of neutrals.

I'm not in possession of a magic ball. I was just in the thick of American politics and recall all these issues from my memory of that life. This specific information was known to me only because I was asked to decide on the best 5 contingency plans that I could think of (then I wrote them up) in case any of those agents got caught and ratted us out. I also wrote 4 contingency plans in case our agents on the French ships got caught and I was a little horrified when I found out about that 'set up'. Mainly because I had been the Ambassador to France during part of that time and might have been killed if they had been caught.

These were all 'deep sleeper cells'. If any of those four countries were planning war with us we would know months before hand and the appropriate cells would have been awakened and then ordered to start a war with some other country instead of with the US.

We had agents on the ships of four countries including Russia. Russia was probably about to invade from the west when Napoleon started in on them. Actually they were already in the process of it. What do think their claims in Alaska, half way across Canada and down to California was all about? Just look at this map. This was only 41 years after their first settlement was established in Alaska yet their official claim on the map was as far east as Alberta Canada (those are the Rocky Mountains on the right side of the map). However, their official claims were not anywhere near the extent of what they took over and nothing compared to what they intended to take over. Beside their well known Fort Ross in California which as everyone knows was fully recognized by all European nations as Spanish territory, they had lots of other forts along the coast and throughout western Canada. The Russian traders themselves were found trading as far east as Manitoba, throughout the Hudson Bay and even some of the great lakes.

The thing that set me off (and still seems to set me off even 200 years later) was that the best locations for their forts already had natives living there. So the Russians would just murder them all and take over the location. The Russians would not even bother to scout out the best location. They would just find the largest indian settlement and assume it was the best location and then murder them all. This just goes to show that their intent was to take over America. We had solid evidence of their plans much earlier (by 1805) and we had indisputable proof by 1811.

Almost all of this evidence is probably still around the capital in various locations. Possibly many are in Madison's memoirs. He was the one that did almost all of the work. I then formulated the contingency plans based on his knowledge. He had people over in Europe pulling out treaties from 500 years in the past. Most of them were still in effect. He had them all indexed in his memory.

Later when Madison was president and it was no longer much of a secret one of Dolley Madison's favorite parlor games, done in complete innocence, was to have guests each pretend to be a country. (You couldn't chose Russia though since they never abided by the treaties.) Then the guests would divide into two groups. The object was to figure a way to get all the countries (people) in one group to go to war with those of the other group using the treaties that they had signed over the previous 500 years.

Madison would explain which treaties in what sequence he would present to the different countries (party goers) in order to align them with the rest of the countries in their group. The last one he would notify was usually Germany and could be depended upon to state 'we are treaty bound to go to war' and then they would go to war as inevitably as night turns to day.

By this method we could have arranged for any combination of countries to go to war with any other combination of countries of our choosing as precisely as if we were dialing the combinations to a bank vault. Germany was like the final turning of the handle and opening the vault door. It was as sure to happen as the conflict between Austria and Serbia avalanched into World War I.

Yes, in order to keep America free we were fully willing and able to have plunged the European countries into World War I as long ago as the 1780's.

One favorite flaw in treaties were the clauses that limited the number of citizens that could be in the other country at any one time. (That was put in the treaties in order to prevent armies from entering other countries in disguise.) After 80 years of peace often about ten times that maximum number would have migrated from one country to the other and those people would be reflected in the census as such. As friendly as it was it did violate the treaty. The two countries would almost then be obligated to go to war with each other.

I think England had signed a treaty in about 1300 stating that they could only maintain a very small navy. By the late 1700's it was about 40 times that size and the treaty was still in effect. This abrogated the treaty which meant the signers were technically at war with each other. That treaty may have been with France, some provinces of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire.

*****It started out when James Madison was attending Princeton and he joined a group of students on a project. It may have a been part of a class. They were going to make a cross language legal dictionary of older languages. They were using treaties to established the precise equivalent words in those different languages (similar to how the 'rosetta stone' was later used). They found that the treaties had more to offer than just words when they discovered that about four countries were still technically at war with each other because of a flaw in the dating. One of the countries did not sign until after the deadline. This invalidated the entire treaty. However, the countries didn't know that they were at war with each other. I don't recall the other details but Madison's group decided that instead of making the dictionary they would dedicate themselves to the pursuit of finding the flaws in all the treaties that they could locate.

I found out about it after he graduated and thought that could be very useful information and it grew from there. The people from that group became a think tank and some were sent to Europe to find every single European treaty that existed. They found more than the Europeans every knew they had signed. Many of the treaties were still in effect even after hundreds of years. The rulers just forgot about them and wrote new ones. Sometimes the new treaties were at cross purposes and many were invalidated by the previous treaty. One thing that I saw often was a treaty that did not allow a country to sign a new treaty with a certain named country. Then it would later sign one with them. Thus the later treaty was invalid from the start. So as you can probably tell treaties could be worked into just about any combination imaginable.

I can't recall how many invalid and flawed treaties they found but I think it was about 150.

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