The Student's Life of Washington; Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving For Young Persons and for the Use of Schools

by Mr. Jay, and signed by the ministers of the two nations on the 19th of November, and was sent out for ratification. Washington immediately made the treaty a close study; some of the provisions were perfectly satisfactory; of others, he did not approve; on the whole, believing the advantages to outweigh the objections, and that it was the best treaty attainable, he made up his mind to ratify it, should it be approved by the Senate.
    As a system of predetermined hostility to the treaty, however, was already manifested, and efforts were made to awaken popular jealousy concerning it, Washington kept its provisions secret, that the public mind might not be preoccupied on the subject. In the course of a few days, however, enough leaked out to be seized upon by the opposition press to excite public distrust, though not enough to convey a distinct idea of the merits of the instrument.
    In the course of this month arrived Mr. Adet, who had been appointed by the French government to succeed Mr. Fauchet as minister to the United States.
From Houdon’s Bust
F ROM H OUDON’S B UST .
Vol. IV.
    The Senate was convened by Washington on the 8th of June, and the treaty of Mr. Jay was laid before it, with its accompanying documents. The session was with closed doors, discussions were long and arduous, and the treaty underwent a scrutinizing examination. The twelfth article met with especial objections.
    This article provided for a direct trade between the United States and the British West India Islands, in American vessels not exceeding seventy tons burden, conveying the produce of the States or of the Islands; but it prohibited the exportation of molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton, in American vessels, either from the United States or the Islands, to any part of the world. Under this article it was a restricted intercourse, but Mr. Jay considered the admission even of small vessels, to the trade of these islands, an important advantage to the commerce of the United States. He had not sufficiently adverted to the fact that, among the prohibited articles, cotton was also a product of the Southern States. Its cultivation had been but recently introduced there; so that when he sailed for Europe hardly sufficient had been raised for domestic consumption, and at the time of signing the treaty very little, if any, had been exported. Still it was now becoming an important staple of the South, and hence the objection of the Senate to this article of the treaty. On the 24th of June two-thirds of the Senate, the constitutional majority, voted for the ratification of the treaty, stipulating, however, that an article be added suspending so much of the twelfth article as respected the West India trade, and that the President be requested to open, without delay, further negotiation on this head.
    In the meantime the popular discontent which had been excited concerning the treaty was daily increasing. The secrecy which had been maintained with regard to its provisions was wrested into a cause of offence. Such was the irritable condition of the public mind when, on the 29th of June, a Senator of the United States (Mr. Mason of Virginia) sent an abstract of the treaty to be published in a leading opposition paper in Philadelphia. The whole country was immediately in a blaze. Beside the opposition party, a portion of the Cabinet was against the ratification. Of course it received but a faltering support, while the attack upon it was vehement and sustained. The assailants seemed determined to carry their point by storm. Meetings to oppose the ratification were held in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. The smaller towns throughout the Union followed their example. In New York a copy of the treaty was burnt before the governor’s house. In Philadelphia it was suspended on a pole carried about the streets, and finally burnt in front of the British minister’s house, amid the shoutings of the populace. The whole country seemed determined, by prompt and clamorous manifestations of dissatisfaction, to make Washington give way.
    He saw their purpose; he was aware of the odious points of view on which the treaty might justly be placed; his own opinion was not particularly favorable to it; but he was convinced that it was better to ratify it, in the manner the Senate had advised, and with the reservation already mentioned, than to suffer matters to remain in their present unsettled and precarious state. Before he could act