ph," p. 220.
For Jay's Instructions, etc., see I. Am. State Papers,
Foreign Relations.--Editor.

It is curious to observe, how the appearance of characters will change,
whilst the root that produces them remains the same. The Washington
faction having waded through the slough of negociation, and whilst it
amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her,
immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the swaggering air of
a bravado. The party papers of that imbecile administration were on
this occasion filled with paragraphs about _Sovereignty_. A paltroon may
boast of his sovereign right to let another kick him, and this is the
only kind of sovereignty shewn in the treaty with England. But those
daring paragraphs, as Timothy Pickering(1) well knows, were intended
for France; without whose assistance, in men, money, and ships, Mr.
Washington would have cut but a poor figure in the American war. But of
his military talents I shall speak hereafter.

I mean not to enter into any discussion of any article of Jay's treaty;
I shall speak only upon the whole of it. It is attempted to be justified
on the ground of its not being a violation of any article or articles
of the treaty pre-existing with France. But the sovereign right of
explanation does not lie with George Washington and his man Timothy;
France, on her part, has, at least, an equal right: and when nations
dispute, it is not so much about words as about things.

A man, such as the world calls a sharper, and versed as Jay must be
supposed to be in the quibbles of the law, may find a way to enter into
engagements, and make bargains, in such a manner as to cheat some other
party, without that party being able, as the phrase is, _to take the law
of him_. This often happens in the cabalistical circle of what is called
law. But when this is attempted to be acted on the national scale of
treaties, it is too despicable to be defended, or to be permitted to
exist. Yet this is the trick upon which Jay's treaty is founded, so
far as it has relation to the treaty pre-existing with France. It is a
counter-treaty to that treaty, and perverts all the great articles of
that treaty to the injury of France, and makes them operate as a bounty
to England, with whom France is at war.

1 Secretary of State.--_Editor._.

The Washington administration shews great desire that the treaty between
France and the United States be preserved. Nobody can d