he
sentiments of a party, which might impose it upon the world as the
deliberate judgment of the public.

Addresses to the chief magistrate, and resolutions of town and country
meetings, were not the only means which were employed to enlist the
American people against the measure which had been advised by the
senate. In an immense number of essays, the treaty was critically
examined, and every argument which might operate on the judgment or
prejudice of the public, was urged in the warm and glowing language of
passion. To meet these efforts by counter efforts, was deemed
indispensably necessary by the friends of that instrument; and the
gazettes of the day are replete with appeals to the passions, and to
the reason, of those who are the ultimate arbiters of every political
question. That the treaty affected the interests of France not less
than those of the United States, was, in this memorable controversy,
asserted by the one party, with as much zeal as it was denied by the
other. These agitations furnished matter to the President for deep
reflection, and for serious regret; but they appear not to have shaken
the decision he had formed, or to have affected his conduct otherwise
than to induce a still greater degree of circumspection in the mode of
transacting the delicate business before him. On their first
appearance, therefore, he resolved to hasten his return to
Philadelphia, for the purpose of considering, at that place rather
than at Mount Vernon, the memorial against the provision order, and
the conditional ratification of the treaty. In a private letter to the
secretary of state, of the 29th of July, accompanying the official
communication of this determination, he stated more at large the
motives which induced it. These were, the violent and extraordinary
proceedings which were taking place, and might be expected, throughout
the union; and his opinion that the memorial, the ratification, and
the instructions which were framing, were of such vast magnitude as
not only to require great individual consideration, but a solemn
conjunct revision.

He viewed the opposition which the treaty was receiving from the
meetings in different parts of the union, in a very serious
light;--not because there was more weight in any of the objections
than was foreseen at first,--for in some of them there was none, and
in others, there were gross misrepresentations; nor as it respected
himself personally, for that he declared sho