nowhere more than in the West. A few of the coolest and most
intelligent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey Marshall, the
Federalist Senator from Kentucky, voted for its ratification; but the
general feeling against it was intense. Even Blount, who by this time
was pretty well disgusted with the way he had been treated by the
Central Government, denounced it, and expressed his belief that
Washington would have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring its
ratification. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Blount to Smith, Aug. 24, 1795.]

Folly of the Westerners.

Yet the Westerners were the very people who had no cause whatever to
complain of the treaty. It was not an entirely satisfactory treaty;
perhaps a man like Hamilton might have procured rather better terms;
but, taken as a whole, it worked an immense improvement upon the
condition of things already existing. Washington's position was
undoubtedly right. He would have preferred a better treaty, but he
regarded the Jay treaty as very much better than none at all. Moreover,
the last people who had a right to complain of it were those who were
most vociferous in their opposition. The anti-Federalist party was on
the whole the party of weakness and disorder, the party that was
clamorous and unruly, but ineffective in carrying out a sustained
policy, whether of offense or of defence, in foreign affairs. The people
who afterwards became known as Jeffersonian Republicans numbered in
their ranks the extremists who had been active as the founders of
Democratic societies in the French interest, and they were ferocious in
their wordy hostility to Great Britain; but they were not dangerous foes
to any foreign government which did not fear words. Had they possessed
the foresight and intelligence to strengthen the Federal Government the
Jay treaty would not have been necessary.

Futility of the State's-Rights Men in Foreign Affairs.

Only a strong, efficient central government, backed by a good fleet and
a well organized army, could hope to wring from England what the French
party, the forerunners of the Jeffersonian Democracy, demanded. But the
Jeffersonians were separatists and State's-rights men. They believed in
a government so weak as to be ineffective, and showed a folly literally
astounding in their unwillingness to provide for the wars which they
were ready to provoke. They resolutely refused to provide an army or a
navy, or to give the Central Government the p