never be said to be established "until some signal display of force has
manifested its power of military coercion." The Federal Government had
now demonstrated that it was equal to the emergency whenever the laws
were opposed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the
ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the
marshals by law. The days of Shays' Rebellion had gone, never to return.

There was an aspect of the insurrection which Washington did not fail to
note in his annual address to Congress in November, 1794. The Democratic
clubs had been unsparing in their condemnation of the excise law, and
their resolutions had more than once a treasonable sound. Washington did
not hesitate to deprecate the untoward influence of these "self-created
societies" and to condemn those "combinations of men, who, careless of
consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse
cannot always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an
ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and
accusations of the whole Government." The Democratic societies now fell
into disrepute and did not long survive their great prototype, the
Jacobin Club of Paris.

Although Jay had presented his credentials in June, 1794, it was the
19th of November before a treaty was signed; and it was not until the
8th of June, 1795, that Washington could send an authentic copy to the
Senate. The most dispassionate member of that body must have confessed
privately to a sense of disappointment as he heard the terms for the
first time. Listening intently for the redress of grievances, he seemed
to hear only concessions. The United States was to assume the debts
still unpaid to British merchants since the peace, so far as "lawful
impediments" had been put in the way of their collection; to open all
ports to British ships on the footing of the most favored nation; and to
make restitution for losses and damages to the property of British
subjects occasioned by French privateers in American waters, whenever
compensation could not be obtained in the ordinary course of justice.
And for all these concessions what had been gained? The promise to
evacuate the Western posts? That was but a tardy redemption of an old
promise. No mention was made of the negroes carried away by British
armies during the war. Nothing was said about the impressment of
American seamen. To be sure, the ports of the East Indies wer