was considered not merely as evidence of the baseness and venality of an unprincipled government, but resented as an insult on the integrity of the United States. The proposed loan, which certainly was no uncommon thing in national diplomacy, was connected without much judgment in the public mind with the bribe, which was to precede it; and those who were not influenced by questions of pretended honour, were terrified by danger of national ruin.

A war fever, producing that delirium which is the usual accompaniment of such an epidemic, spread rapidly through the country, and was inflamed and aggravated by men, who in a subsequent period of our history discovered war to be among the most terrible of all national calamities.

J

An impression was made on popular opinion favourable to the administration of the national government, so that the opposition, which had before nearly or quite divided the physical strength of the country, rapidly lost its numerical force. In the excitement, and under the delusion of the moment, the residence of Mr. Gerry at Paris, was severely censured by the administration, and his immediate recall announced by the secretary of state, in a letter which hardly preserved the form of official civility.*

* This letter bearing date 25th June 1798, was communicated to congress with the president's message covering Mr. Gerry's despatches, and to most readers not particularly attentive to dates, it would seem that his remaining in France was in viola

Preparation was made for a war, which was intended to demonstrate the greatness and glory of the United States. Its burthens could hardly be felt at such a moment of unnatural irritation. The condition, which the great party who had been in opposition to the then administration had endeavoured to avert, appeared now rapidly approaching, while they had for a time at least, lost that hold on the good opinion of the public, which could alone enable them to prevent it.

Mr. Gerry arrived in the United States on the 1st October 1798, and communicated to the secretary of state the letters which had passed between him and the French minister since the departure of his] colleagues from Paris, with other proceedings already adverted to.

These despatches were laid before congress on the 15th of January 1799. Unwilling however to permit them to go alone, and apprehensive of the effect, which they might produce on the republican party, broken in a good degree and disabled, but by no means annihilated, the secretary followed them by a commentary, intended no doubt to overwhelm Mr. Gerry with irretrievable disgrace, to support the high and lofty pretensions of the government, to keep up that fervour without which armies, navies, taxes, and the appendages of milita

tion of its order. But this letter was never received by Mr. Gerry. If it was ever sent to Europe, it passed him on his return. "My first knowledge of its existence," he says in a letter to the president, "was in the public newspaper."

ry institutions could not derive support, to gather round the administration the pride, patriotism and wealth of the nation, and to expose its opponents to disgrace, as aliens to the interest and welfare of their country.

The leaders

There commenced at this moment a series of measures which has marked the succeeding period as the epoch of the reign of terror. of the dominant party were carrying their policy to extremes, which alarmed the eminent citizen who presided in the councils of the country, and although checked and controlled by his firmness and the reproof which he bestowed on the most distinguished of those concerned, and particularly on the secretary of state, whom he dismissed from his station, it produced such reaction in the public mind, as to destroy forever the ascendency of the federal party in the United States.

CHAPTER VII.

Commentary on the mission to France, and strictures on colonel Pickering's publications in relation to it.

THE most obvious subject of remark, on a review of this extraordinary mission, is the submission of the envoys to communications with individuals producing no evidence of official rank; the affected secrecy of these intrusive agents; and the great consequence given to the affair, by the minute recapitulation of every trifling circumstance, in official despatches to the American government.

If the conduct of the envoys in these undignified conferences was evidence of their anxiety for peace, the detailed communication, which they made of it, was not less calculated for war. It is a single instance in the history of public missions that so much should be recounted, where so little was performed; although it cannot be believed that the republican envoys were indeed the first on whom the arts of European diplomacy were essayed.

But the censure, if deserved, is divisible among all the members of the embassy. In the report of the secretary of state, the dissent of one of them is no where intimated, although he was

aware that on the 20th October Mr. Gerry proposed to his colleagues that they should put an end to all informal negotiation.

It was so determined; and the only subject of regret, for which all of them are to account, is found in their departure from this judicious resolution.

The preference and selection of Mr. Gerry from his colleagues, by the minister of the directory, is the next subject of remark, and has been most adroitly used to the injury of his fame.

To be selected by an enemy implies treachery to a friend. It has been said with sarcastic imputation, that if the French government could treat with him and not with his colleagues, he must have been less attached to America than they were, or more subservient than they would be to the interests of France. The insinuation is made with something of temper in the journal of one of the envoys, it is brought forward in the report of the American secretary, and alleged in plainer terms in his subsequent review.

Could the inference be well drawn the fact would indeed be disgraceful; but it is not perceived why, if any dependence is to be placed on the allegations of the French minister, his whole statement should not be received with equal credit, and why therefore his refusal to receive Messrs. Marshall and Pinckney as envoys of the United States, on the pretence that they were English