ical conduct of the nation. While many
favoured such discriminations as might eventually turn the commerce of
the United States into new channels, others maintained that, on this
subject, equality ought to be observed; that trade ought to be guided
by the judgment of individuals, and that no sufficient motives existed
for that sacrifice of general and particular interests, which was
involved in the discriminations proposed;--discriminations which, in
their view, amounted to a tax on American agriculture, and a bounty on
the navigation and manufactures of a favoured foreign nation.

The former opinion was taken up with warmth by the secretary of state;
and the latter was adopted with equal sincerity by the secretary of
the treasury. This contrariety of sentiment respecting commercial
regulations was only a part of a general system. It extended itself to
all the relations which might subsist between America and those two
great powers.

In all popular governments, the press is the most ready channel by
which the opinions and the passions of the few are communicated to the
many; and of the press, the two great parties forming in the United
States, sought to avail themselves. The Gazette of the United States
supported the systems of the treasury department, while other papers
enlisted themselves under the banners of the opposition. Conspicuous
among these, was the National Gazette, a paper edited by a clerk in
the department of state. The avowed purpose for which the secretary
patronized this paper, was to present to the eye of the American
people, European intelligence derived from the Leyden gazette, instead
of English papers; but it soon became the vehicle of calumny against
the funding and banking systems, against the duty on home-made
spirits, which was denominated an excise, and against the men who had
proposed and supported those measures. With perhaps equal asperity,
the papers attached to the party which had defended these systems,
assailed the motives of the leaders of the opposition.

[Sidenote: Letters from Washington on this subject.]

This schism in his cabinet was a subject of extreme mortification to
the President. Entertaining a high respect for the talents, and a real
esteem for the characters, of both gentlemen, he was unwilling to part
with either; and exerted all the influence he possessed to effect a
reconciliation between them. In a letter of the 23d of August,
addressed to the secretary of state,