hall not escape, if guilty, that
punishment which will at once wipe off the temporary stain laid upon us,
and be a warning to traitors hereafter how they sport with the
interests and feelings of their fellow-citizens. He was instructed, or
he was not: if he was, we will drop the curtain; if not, and he acted of
and from himself, we shall lament the want of a GUILLOTINE."

The Pendleton Society of the same state declared their "abhorrence and
detestation of a treaty which gives the English government more power
over us as states than it claimed over us as colonists--a treaty,
involving in it pusillanimity, stupidity, ingratitude, and treachery."

In Virginia, the grand panacea for all political evils of the federal
government, DISUNION, was again presented. The following specimen of the
prescription, taken from a Virginia newspaper, will suffice as an
example:--

"Notice is hereby given, that in case the treaty entered into by
that damned arch-traitor, John Jay, with the British tyrant should
be ratified, a petition will be presented to the next general
assembly of Virginia at their next session, praying that the said
state may recede from the Union, and be under the government of one
hundred thousand free and independent Virginians.

"P. S. As it is the wish of the people of the said state to enter
into a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, with any other
state or states of the present Union who are averse to returning
again under the galling yoke of Great Britain, the printers of the
(at present) United States are requested to publish the above
notification.--_Richmond, July 31, 1795_."

Even at that early period of the republic, neither newspaper editors,
nor political combinations, nor gatherings of clamorous assemblies,
could make any sensible impression on the real strength of the Union.

Nor did these individual or public demonstrations move Washington from
his steady march in the line of duty, or in his allegiance to what he
discerned to be truth and justice. On his way to his home on the
Potomac, he was overtaken at Baltimore, on the eighteenth of July, by
the committee from Boston, bearing to him the proceedings of the great
public meeting there on the subject of the treaty. He immediately sent
the papers back to Mr. Randolph, the secretary of state, with a request
that he would confer upon the subject with the other two secretaries and
th