their
children, to the latest generation, might well be proud, that they ought
to be on good terms with that powerful state with whom they were
co-heirs in all the ideas and institutions constituting the civilization
that made her great. They hoped to build up, west of the Atlantic Ocean,
"an Inglishe Nation" in its broadest sense, of which Walter Raleigh had
hoped that he might live to see the beginning, and which the latest
historical writers in England are just now recognizing as the most
important part of the modern empire of the English race.

The House of Representatives was not in session when the Jay treaty was
ratified by the President and Senate, but Mr. Madison's letters show
that he could see in it nothing but evil. In February, 1796, the
ratification by both governments was announced to both houses of
Congress, and measures were at once taken by the Republicans in the
lower house to render the treaty, if possible, null and void. A
resolution, warmly supported by Mr. Madison, was offered, calling upon
the President for copies of the instructions under which Mr. Jay acted,
with the correspondence and any other papers, proper to be made public,
relating to the negotiation. The resolution was subjected to a debate of
three weeks, but was finally passed. The request was refused by the
President, on the ground that the treaty-making power was, by the
Constitution, confided to the President and Senate. It was on this point
mainly that the debate had turned; and the President, in support of his
opinion as well as that of the Federalists generally, referred to his
recollection of the plain intention of the Constitutional Convention,
and to the fact that a proposition, "that no treaty should be binding on
the United States which was not ratified by law," was "explicitly
rejected." Mr. Madison said a day or two after, that, while he did not
doubt "the case to be as stated, he had no recollection of it." Of the
message itself, he said that it was "as unexpected as its tone and tenor
are improper and indelicate." But Hamilton, he thought, wrote it, and
the President was, as usual, lamented over for having been taken in. A
resolution, however, was finally passed in favor of the treaty, though
by a majority of three only. The debate upon it was earnest and long,
Mr. Madison leading the opposition. His disappointment was bitter. "The
progress of this business throughout," he wrote to Jefferson, "has been
to me the most wo