everything rather than be on any terms of concord with the mother country, and rather than moderate in any degree their passionate devotion to France.

In the populous cities meetings of the people were immediately summoned, in order to take into consideration and to express their opinions respecting the treaty. It may well be supposed that persons feeling some distrust of their capacity to form a correct judgment on a subject so complex, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people--pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty, and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons for their opinions which, in many instances, had only an imaginary existence, and in some were obviously founded on the strong prejudices which were entertained with respect to foreign powers. It is difficult to review the various resolutions and addresses to which the occasion gave birth without feeling some degree of astonishment, mingled with humiliation, at perceiving such proofs of the fallibility of human reason.

The first meeting was held in Boston. The example of that city was soon followed by New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, and, as if their addresses were designed at least as much for their fellow-citizens as for their President, while one copy was transmitted to him another was committed to the press. The precedent set by these large cities was followed with wonderful rapidity throughout the Union, and the spirit in which this system of opposition originated sustained no diminution of violence in its progress. The party which supported the administration, however, were not idle; they held meetings and sent addresses to Washington, approving his principles of neutrality and peace. On the 18th of July (1795), at Baltimore, on his way to Mount Vernon, the President received the resolutions passed by the meeting at Boston, which were enclosed to him in a letter from the selectmen of that town. The answer to this letter and to these resolutions, given in a subsequent page, evinced the firmness with which he had resolved to meet the effort that was obviously making to control the exercise of his constitutional functions, by giving a promptness and vigor to the expression of the sentiments of a party which might impose it upon the world as the deliberate judgment of the public.

Addresses to Washington, and resolutions of town and country meetings were not the only means which were employed to enlist the American people against the measure which had been advised by the Senate. In an immense number of essays, the treaty was critically examined and every argument which might operate on the judgment or prejudice of the public was urged in the warm and glowing language of passion. To meet these efforts by counter efforts was deemed indispensably necessary by the friends of that instrument, and the gazettes of the day are replete with appeals to the passions and to the reason of those who are the ultimate arbiters of every political question. That the treaty affected the interests of France not less than those of the United States, was, in this memorable controversy, asserted by the one party with as much zeal as it was denied by the other. These agitations furnished matter to Washington for deep reflection and for serious regret, but they appear not to have shaken the decision he had formed or to have affected his conduct otherwise than to induce a still greater degree of circumspection in the mode of transacting the delicate business before him. On their first appearance, therefore, he resolved to hasten his return to Philadelphia, for the purpose of considering at that place, rather than at Mount Vernon, the memorial against the provision order and the conditional ratification of the treaty.