ir benefit, ought to transact all national
affairs in open day. This doctrine was not too absurd for the
extravagance of the moment.

The predetermined hostility to the treaty increased in activity, as
the period for deciding its fate approached. On its particular merits,
no opinion could be formed, because they were unknown; but on the
general question of reconciliation between the two countries, a
decisive judgment was extensively made up. The sentiments called forth
by the occasion demonstrated, that no possible adjustment of
differences with Great Britain, no possible arrangement which might
promise a future friendly intercourse with that nation, could be
satisfactory. The President was openly attacked; his whole system
strongly condemned; and the mission of Mr. Jay, particularly, was
reprobated in terms of peculiar harshness. That a treaty of amity and
commerce should have been formed, whatever might be its principles,
was a degrading insult to the American people; a pusillanimous
surrender of their honour; and an insidious injury to France. Between
such a compact, and an alliance, no distinction was taken. It was an
abandonment of the ancient ally of the United States, whose friendship
had given them independence, and whose splendid victories still
protected them, for a close connexion with her natural enemy, and with
the enemy of human liberty.

The pretended object of the mission, it was said, was a reparation for
wrongs, not a contaminating connexion with the most faithless and
corrupt court in the world. The return of the envoy without that
reparation, was a virtual surrender of the claim. The honour of the
United States required a peremptory demand of the immediate surrender
of the western posts, and of compensation for the piratical
depredations committed on their commerce; not a disgraceful and
humiliating negotiation. The surrender, and the compensation, ought to
have been made instantly; for no reliance could be placed in promises
to be performed in future.

That the disinclination formerly manifested by Great Britain, to give
the stability and certainty of compact to the principles regulating
the commercial intercourse between the two countries, had constituted
an important item in the catalogue of complaints against that power:
that the existence, or non-existence of commercial treaties had been
selected as the criterion by which to regulate the discriminations
proposed to be made in the trade of fo