n from the oblivion into
which they had sunk, it had been supposed forever, and were
republished as genuine. The silence with which the President treated
this as well as every other calumny, was construed into an
acknowledgment of its truth; and the malignant commentators on this
spurious text, would not admit the possibility of its being
apocryphal.

Those who laboured incessantly to establish the favourite position
that the executive was under other than French influence, reviewed
every act of the administration connected with its foreign relations,
and continued to censure every part of the system with extreme
bitterness. Not only the treaty with Great Britain, but all those
measures which had been enjoined by the duties of neutrality, were
reprobated as justly offensive to France; and no opinion which had
been advanced by Mr. Genet, in his construction of the treaties
between the two nations, was too extravagant to be approved. The
ardent patriot can not maintain the choicest rights of his country
with more zeal than was manifested in supporting all the claims of the
French republic upon the United States. These discussions were not
confined to the public prints. In almost every assemblage of
individuals, whether for social or other purposes, this favourite
theme excluded all others; and the pretensions of France were
supported and controverted with equal earnestness. The opposing
parties, mutually exasperated by unceasing altercations, cherished
reciprocal suspicions of each other, and each charged its adversary
with being under a foreign influence.[44] Those who favoured the
measures adopted by America were accused as the enemies of liberty,
the enemies of France, and the tools of Britain. In turn, they charged
their opponents with disseminating principles subversive of all order
in society; and with supporting a foreign government against their
own.

[Footnote 44: See note No. XIV. at the end of the volume.]

Whatever might be the real opinion of the French government on the
validity of its charges against the United States, those charges were
too vehemently urged, and too powerfully espoused in America, to be
abandoned at Paris. If at any time they were in part relinquished,
they were soon resumed.

For a time, Mr. Fauchet forbore to press the points on which his
predecessor had insisted; but his complaints of particular cases which
grew out of the war, and out of the rules which had been established