a due regard to the convenience of our citizens who cannot but be sensible of the true wisdom of encountering a small present addition to their contributions, to obviate a future accumulation of burdens."

The speech was concluded with the following impressive exhortation:

"The several subjects to which I have now referred, open a wide range to your deliberations and involve some of the choicest interests of our common country. Permit me to bring to your remembrance the magnitude of your task. Without an unprejudiced coolness, the welfare of the government may be hazarded; without harmony, as far as consists with freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But as the legislative proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness languish from the want of my strenuous and warmest co-operation."

The day succeeding that on which this speech was delivered, a special message was sent to both houses containing some of the promised communications relative to the connection of the United States with foreign powers.

After suggesting, as a motive for this communication, that it not only disclosed "matter of interesting inquiry to the Legislature," but "might indeed give rise to deliberations to which they alone were competent," the President added: "The representative and executive bodies of France have manifested generally a friendly attachment to this country; have given advantages to our commerce and navigation; and have made overtures for placing these advantages on permanent ground. A decree, however, of the National Assembly, subjecting vessels laden with provisions to be carried into their ports, and making enemy goods lawful prize in the vessel of a friend, contrary to our treaty, though revoked at one time as to the United States, has been since extended to their vessels also, as has been recently stated to us. Representations on the subject will be immediately given in charge to our minister there, and the result shall be communicated to the Legislature.

"It is with extreme concern I have to inform you that the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister plenipotentiary here, has breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of the nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to involve us in a war abroad and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his acts, or those of his agents, have threatened an immediate commitment in the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their effect has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws and by an exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not imminent, they have been borne with, from sentiments of regard of his nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction that they would not suffer us to remain long exposed to the actions of a person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and, I will add, from a reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their prinples of peace and order. In the meantime I have respected and pursued the stipulations of our treaties, according to what I judged their true sense, and have withheld no act of friendship which their affairs have called for from us, and which justice to others left us free to perform. I have gone further. Rather than employ force for the restitution of certain vessels which I deemed the United States bound to restore, I thought it more advisable to satisfy the parties by avowing it to be my opinion that, if restitution were not made, it would be incumbent on the United States to make compensation."

The message next proceeded to state that inquiries had been instituted respecting the vexations and spoliations committed on the commerce of the United States, the result of which, when received, would be communicated.

The order issued by the British government on the 8th of June (1793), and the measures taken by the executive of the United States in consequence thereof, were briefly noticed, and the discussions which had taken place in relation to the nonexecution of the treaty of peace, were also mentioned. The message was then concluded with a reference to the negotiations with Spain. "The public good," it was said, "requiring that the present state of these should be made known to the Legislature in confidence only, they would be the subject of a separate and subsequent communication."

This message was accompanied with copies of the correspondence between the Secretary of State and the French minister, on the points of difference which subsisted between the two governments, together with several documents necessary for the establishment of particular facts, and with the letter written by Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Morris, which justified the conduct of the United States by arguments too clear to be misunderstood, and too strong ever to be controverted.

The extensive discussions which had taken place relative to the nonexecution of the treaty of peace, and the correspondence produced by the objectionable measures which had been adopted by the British government during the existing war, were also laid before the Legislature.

In a popular government the representatives of the people may generally be considered as a mirror, reflecting truly the passions and feelings which govern their constituents. In the late elections, the strength of parties had been tried, and the opposition had derived so much aid from associating the cause of France with its own principles, as to furnish much reason to suspect that, in one