es of neutrality, capable of being wielded with great effect.

The resentment excited by the rigour with which the maritime powers of
Europe retained the monopoly of their colonial commerce, had, without
the aid of those powerful causes which had lately been brought into
operation, been directed peculiarly against Great Britain. These
resentments had been greatly increased. That nation had not mitigated
the vexations and inconveniences which war necessarily inflicts on
neutral trade, by any relaxations in her colonial policy.

[Sidenote: Decree of the national convention relative to neutral
commerce.]

To this rigid and repulsive system, that of France presented a perfect
contrast. Either influenced by the politics of the moment, or
suspecting that, in a contest with the great maritime nations of
Europe, her commerce must search for security in other bottoms than
her own, she opened the ports of her colonies to every neutral flag,
and offered to the United States a new treaty, in which it was
understood that every mercantile distinction between Americans and
Frenchmen should be totally abolished.

With that hasty credulity which, obedient to the wishes, can not await
the sober and deliberate decisions of the judgment, the Americans
ascribed this change, and these propositions, to the liberal genius of
freedom; and expected the new commercial and political systems to be
equally durable. As if, in the term REPUBLIC, the avaricious spirit of
commercial monopoly would lose its influence over men; as if the
passions were to withdraw from the management of human affairs, and
leave the helm to the guidance of reason, and of disinterested
philanthropy; a vast proportion of the American people believed this
novel system to be the genuine offspring of new-born liberty; and
consequently expected that, from the success of the republican arms, a
flood of untried good was to rush upon the world.

The avidity with which the neutral merchants pressed forward to reap
the rich and tempting harvest offered to them by the regulations and
the wants of France, presented a harvest not less rich and tempting to
the cruisers of her enemies. Captures to a great extent were made,
some with, others without, justifiable cause; and the irritations
inseparable from disappointment in gathering the fruits of a gainful
traffic, were extensively communicated to the agricultural part of
society.

The vexations on the ocean to which neutrals are com