years afterward,
when the Federal party had ceased to exist under that title, this was
announced as the true American policy, and was thenceforth known as "The
Monroe Doctrine," though the merit, even of re-discovery, did not belong
to President Monroe.

In nine cases out of ten, perhaps in ninety-nine out of a hundred, the
wisest statesmanship is the knowledge when and how to compromise.
Certainly that was all John Jay, whom the President sent to England to
make a treaty, could do. The treaty was a bad one; that is, it was not
such an one as any President and Senate would have dared to consent to
for the last sixty years; it was not so good an one as that which Monroe
and Pinkney negotiated ten years later, and which President Jefferson,
lest it should help England and hurt France, then quietly locked up in
his desk without permitting the Senate even to know of its existence;
nor was it so bad as the treaty of peace made with England in 1814. But
it was undoubtedly the best that could be done at the time. The question
was between it and nothing; and the best its warmest defenders could say
was that it was better than nothing. No treaty meant war; and war at
that moment with England meant ruin. At least so the Federalists
thought, and, so far as human foresight could go, they were probably
right.

But never was a treaty more unpopular than this, when its provisions
came to be understood. The government, in delaying to make it public,
seemed to fear for its reception, and by that hesitation helped to raise
the very doubts it was afraid of. But when it was published the whole
South was aroused as one man on finding that the payment for fugitive
slaves, who during the war of the Revolution had sought refuge with the
British army, was not provided for. Other concessions made to England
were, in other parts of the country, deemed not less humiliating and
injurious to the national honor than this refusal to pay for runaway
negroes. Also, there was a one-sided stipulation relating to commerce in
the West Indies, so injurious to American interests that the President
and Senate, rather than ratify it, determined to reject the whole treaty
and take the consequences. There was hardly a town of any note that did
not hold its indignation meeting. Jay was burned in effigy, or the
attempt was made so to express the public disapprobation, in more than
one of the larger towns. Hamilton, when at a public meeting in New York
he tried to