midable enemy of France, until those terms were accepted, and the
treaty signed.

After visiting England and returning to Paris, having declined an
invitation from the Spanish Government to resume negotiations, and also
a tender from his own Government of the English mission, Jay returned to
his native land with delight, and on landing in New York, on the 24th of
July, 1784, was received with great honor and affection. Ten years of
public life had so little weaned him from his legal proclivities that he
had determined to resume practice; but Congress urged upon him the
important position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, which place he
filled with distinguished ability until the convention to form the
Constitution met. In his correspondence, Jay's views of government are
frankly and clearly unfolded: he had experienced the manifold evils of
inadequate authority; and while he would have power emanate from the
people, he deeply felt the necessity of making it sufficient for the
exigencies of civil society: a strong General Government, therefore, he
deemed essential to national prosperity; his theory was not speculative,
but practical, founded upon observation and experience: it was sustained
by the wisest and best of his countrymen: it was, however, opposed to a
prevalent idea of State rights, a jealousy of their surrender and
infringement; comparatively few of his fellow citizens had, by reading
and reflection, risen to the level of the problem whose solution was to
be found in a charter at once securing all essential private rights and
local freedom, while binding together, in a firm and patriotic union,
the will and interests of a continent. Add to these obstacles the fierce
partisan feeling engendered by the circumstances of the time and
country--fears of aristocratic influences on the one hand, and sectional
intrigues on the other, and we can easily perceive that the first duty
of the enlightened and patriotic was to clear away prejudices, explain
principles, advocate cardinal political truths, and lift the whole
subject out of the dense region of faction and into the calm and clear
sphere of reason and truth. Accordingly, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and
others, by public discussion sought to elucidate and vindicate the
Constitution: by conversation, correspondence, in the committee room and
the assembly, through reference to the past, analysis of the present,
anticipations of the future, John Jay, directly and indirectly