outside the territory of a foreign State, halting our ships on the high seas for this purpose, often leaving them half-manned, and sometimes recklessly and cruelly impressing native-born Americans-an outrageous policy which ended in the war of 1812. The ignorance and injustice of the English admiralty courts aggravated most of these abuses.

Genet's proceedings, spoken of in the next chapter, which partly public sentiment, partly lack of army and navy, made it impossible for our Government to prevent, enraged Great Britain to the verge of war. After the British orders in council of November 6, 1793, intended to destroy all neutral commerce with the French colonies, and Congress's counter-stroke of an embargo the following March, war was positively imminent. The President resolved to send Jay to England as envoy extraordinary, to make one more effort for an understanding.

The treaty negotiated by this gentleman, and ratified June 24, 1795 (excepting Arti

cle XII., on the French West India trade), was doubtless the most favorable that could have been secured under the circumstances; yet it satisfied no one and was humiliating in the extreme. The western posts were indeed to be vacated by June 1, 1796, though without indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal. The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy, Washington himself attacked. The utmost that Hamilton in his powerful "Letters of Camillus" could show was that the treaty seemed preferable to war. Plainly we had then little to hope and much to fear from war with Great Britain, yet even vast numbers of Federalists denounced the pact as a base surrender to the nation's ancient tyrant, and wished an appeal to arms.

Fisher Ames's eloquence decided the

House for the treaty. An invalid, with but a span of life before him, he spoke as from the tomb. There is, I believe," so ran his peroration, "no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences (should the treaty fail of ratification) greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold on life is, may outlive the Government and Constitution of my country!"

It was the most delicate crisis of Washington's presidency, and no other American then alive, being in his place, could have passed through it successfully. After the fury gradually subsided, men for a long time acquiesced rather than believed in the step which had been taken. In the end the treaty proved solidly advantageous, rather through circumstances, however, than by its intrinsic excellence.

VOL. II.-16

CHAPTER V.

RELATIONS WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

AT its beginning all Americans hailed the Revolution in France with joy, but its terrible excesses, when they appeared, produced here the same effect as in England, of alienating every one conservatively inclined. This included the mass of the Federalist party. On the contrary, most of the Republicans, now more numerous, now less, actuated partly by true insight into the struggle, and partly by the magic of the words "revolution" and "republic," favored the revolutionists with a devotion which even the Reign of Terror in France scarcely shook. It was in consequence of this attitude on its part that the party came to be dubbed "democratic-republican" instead of republican," the com

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