injury, were excusable. It was not wonderful, that the events of war were under the first impressions heard from good and prudent men. But to revive them at this late hour, when fact and reflection unite to condemn them; to arraign a conduct which has elevated the national character to the highest point of true glory; to hope to embark you in the condemnation of that conduct, and to make your indignation against it useful to the cause of insurrection and treason, are indications of a wrong-headedness, perverseness, or profligacy, for which it is not easy to find terms. of adequate reprobation.

Happily the plotters of mischief knew ye not. They derive what they mistake for your image from an original in their own heated and crooked imaginations, and they hope to mould a wise, reflecting, and dispassionate people to purposes which presuppose an ignorant, unthinking, and turbulent herd.

But the declamation against your representatives for their love of peace, is but the preface to the main design. That design is to alienate you from the support of the laws, by the spectre of an odious excise system, baneful to liberty, engendered by corruption, and nurtured by the INSTRUMENTALITY (favored word, fruitful source of mountebank wit) of the enemies of freedom.

TULLY.

HORATIUS.

To the People of the United States.

COUNTRYMEN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS :

May, 1795.

Nothing can be more false or ridiculous, justly considered, than the assertion that great sacrifices of your interests are made in the treaty with Great Britain.

As to the controverted points between the two nations, the treaty provides satisfactorily for the great and essential ones; and only foregoes objects of an inferior and disputable nature, of

no real consequence to the permanent welfare of the country. As to trade, the dilemma is this: if an article is added for granting us such privileges in the British West Indies, as are satisfactory to us, it will give a duration of TWELVE years to the treaty, and will render it as good a one as the most sanguine could desire, and a better one than any other power of Europe can make with us; for no other power in Europe can give us the advantages in the East Indies, which this treaty confers.

If that article be not added, the commercial part of the treaty will expire in Two years after the present war, by its own limitation.

It is therefore preposterous to talk of great sacrifices in a commercial sense. This observation is to be understood with the exception of the third article; which regulates the trade between us and the neighboring British territories, which is permanent, and which is certainly a precious article; inevitably throwing into our lap the greatest part of the fur trade, with the trade of the two Canadas. This is a full answer to the idle tale of sacrifices by the treaty, as the pretext for violating your Constitution, and for sullying your faith and your honor.

It is an unquestionable truth, fellow-citizens, one which it is essential you should understand, that the great and cardinal sin of the treaty in the eyes of its adversaries is, that it puts an end to controversy with Great Britain.

We have a sect of politicians among us, who, influenced by a servile and degrading subserviency to the views of France, have adopted it as a fundamental tenet, that there ought to subsist between us and Great Britain, eternal variance and discord.

What we now see is a part of the same system which led the ministry of Louis the XVIth to advise our commissioners for making peace to treat with Great Britain without the acknowledgment of our independence; wishing that the omission of this acknowledgment might perpetuate a jealousy and dread of Great Britain, and occasion a greater necessity for our future dependence on France.

It is a part of the same system, which, during our war with Great Britain, produced a resolution of our public councils, with

out adequate motive or equivalent, to sacrifice the navigation of the Mississippi to Spain; and which also begat a disposition to abandon our claim to any equal participation in the cod-fisheries.

It is a part of the same disgraceful system which fettered our commissioners for making peace with the impolitic and humiliating instruction to submit all their motions to the direction of the French Cabinet, and which attempted a censure upon them for breaking through that system, and in consequence of it effecting a peace, glorious and advantageous for this country beyond expectation.

The present rulers of France proclaimed to the world the insidious and unfriendly policy of the former government towards this country. Their successors may hereafter unmask equally insidious and unfriendly views in the present rulers.

But if you are as discerning as I believe you to be, you will not wait for this evidence to form your opinion. You will see in the conduct of the agents of that government, wherever they are, that they are machinating against your independence, peace, and happiness;—that not content with a fair competition in your trade, on terms of equal privilege, they are laboring to continue you at variance with Great Britain, in order that you may be dependent on France.

This conduct in the known agents of a foreign government is not to be wondered at. It marks the usual and immemorial policy of all the governments of Europe.

But, that any of your countrymen, that men who have been honored with your suffrages, should be the supple instruments of this crooked policy, that they should stoop to nourish and foster this exotic plant, and should exchange the pure and holy love of their own country for a meretricious foreign amour-that they should be willing to sacrifice your interests to their animosity against one foreign nation, and their devotion for another, is justly matter of surprise and indignation. No terms of reprobation are too severe for so faithless and so unworthy a conduct.

Reason, religion, philosophy, policy, disavow the spurious and odious doctrine, that we ought to cherish and cultivate enmity with any nation whatever.

In reference to a nation with whom we have such extensive relations of commerce as with Great Britain-to a power so capable, from her maritime strength, of annoying us-it must be the offspring of treachery or extreme folly. If you consult your true interest, your motto cannot fail to be, "PEACE and TRADE with ALL NATIONS-beyond our present engagements, POLITICAL · CONNECTION With NONE." You ought to spurn from you, as the box of Pandora, the fatal heresy of a close alliance, or in the language of Genet, a true family compact with France. This would at once make you a mere satellite of France, and entangle you in all the contests, broils and wars of Europe.

"Tis evident that the controversies of Europe must often grow out of causes and interests foreign to this country. Why then should we, by a close political connection with any power of Europe, expose our peace and interest, as a matter of course, to all the shocks with which their mad rivalship and wicked ambition so frequently convulse the earth? Twere insanity to embrace such a system. The avowed and secret partisans of it merit our contempt for their folly, or our execration for their depravity. HORATIUS.

CAMILLUS.

DEFENCE OF MR. JAY'S TREATY.

NO. I.

July 22, 1795.

It was to have been foreseen, that the treaty which Mr. Jay was charged to negotiate with Great Britain, whenever it should appear, would have to contend with many perverse dispositions, and some honest prejudices; that there was no measure in which the government could engage, so little likely to be viewed according to its intrinsic merits-so very likely to encounter misconception, jealousy, and unreasonable dislike. For this, many reasons may be assigned.

It is only to know the vanity and vindictiveness of human nature, to be convinced, that while this generation lasts, there will always exist among us, men irreconcilable to our present national Constitution; embittered in their animosity in proportion to the success of its operations, and the disappointment of their inauspicious predictions. It is a material inference from this, that such men will watch, with lynx's eyes, for opportunities of discrediting the proceedings of the government, and will display a hostile and malignant zeal upon every occasion, where they think there are any prepossessions of the community to favor their enterprises. A treaty with Great Britain was too fruitful an occasion not to call forth all their activity.

It is only to consult the history of nations, to perceive, that every country, at all times, is cursed by the existence of men, who, actuated by an irregular ambition, scruple nothing which they imagine will contribute to their own advancement and importance in monarchies, supple courtiers; in republics, fawning or turbulent demagogues, worshipping still the idol, power, wherever placed, whether in the hands of a prince or of the people, and trafficking in the weaknesses, vices, frailties, or prejudices of the one or the other. It was to have been expected, that such men, counting more on the passions than on the reason of their fellowcitizens, and anticipating that the treaty would have to struggle with prejudices, would be disposed to make an alliance with popular discontent, to nourish it, and to press it into the service of their particular views.

It was not to have been doubted, that there would be one or more foreign powers, indisposed to a measure which accommodated our differences with Great Britain, and laid the foundation of future good understanding, merely because it had that effect.

Nations are never content to confine their rivalships and enmities to themselves. It is their usual policy, to disseminate them as widely as they can, regardless how far it may interfere with the tranquillity or happiness of the nations which they are able to influence. Whatever pretensions may be made, the world is yet remote from the spectacle of that just and generous policy, whether in the cabinets of republics or of kings, which would