When the revolution of America was finally established by the
termination of the war, the world gave her credit for great character;
and she had nothing to do but to stand firm upon that ground. The
British ministry had their hands too full of trouble to have provoked
a rupture with her, had she shown a proper resolution to defend her
rights. But encouraged as they were by the submissive character of the
American administration, they proceeded from insult to insult, till none
more were left to be offered. The proposals made by Sweden and Denmark
to the American administration were disregarded. I know not if so much
as an answer has been returned to them. The minister penitentiary,
(as some of the British prints called him,) Mr. Jay, was sent on a
pilgrimage to London, to make up all by penance and petition. In the
mean time the lengthy and drowsy writer of the pieces signed _Camillas_
held himself in reserve to vindicate every thing; and to sound in
America the tocsin of terror upon the inexhaustible resources of
England. Her resources, says he, are greater than those of all the other
powers. This man is so intoxicated with fear and finance, that he knows
not the difference between _plus_ and _minus_--between a hundred pounds
in hand, and a hundred pounds worse than nothing.

The commerce of America, so far as it had been established by all the
treaties that had been formed prior to that by Jay, was free, and the
principles upon which it was established were good. That ground ought
never to have been departed from. It was the justifiable ground
of right, and no temporary difficulties ought to have induced an
abandonment of it. The case is now otherwise. The ground, the scene, the
pretensions, the everything, are changed. The commerce of America is, by
Jay's treaty, put under foreign dominion. The sea is not free for her.
Her right to navigate it is reduced to the right of escaping; that is,
until some ship of England or France stops her vessels, and carries them
into port. Every article of American produce, whether from the sea or
the sand, fish, flesh, vegetable, or manufacture, is, by Jay's treaty,
made either contraband or seizable. Nothing is exempt. In all other
treaties of commerce, the article which enumerates the contraband
articles, such as fire arms, gunpowder, &c, is followed by another
article which enumerates the articles not contraband: but it is not so
in Jay's treaty. There is no exempting article. Its