amation should issue forbidding citizens of the
United States to take part in any hostilities on the seas, with or
against any of the belligerent powers, and warning them against carrying
to any such powers any of those articles deemed contraband according to
the modern usage of nations; and enjoining them from all acts and
proceedings inconsistent with the duties of a friendly nation toward
those at war. It was also unanimously agreed that a minister from the
republic of France should be received. The remaining questions were
postponed for further consideration.

In the excited state of the public mind, and the proclivity of the
popular feeling toward sympathy with France, Washington's proclamation
met with the severest censures. Neither his unbounded popularity nor the
reverence for his character, as a wise, and honest, and patriotic man,
were proof against the operations of that feeling; and the proclamation
was assailed with the greatest vehemence. Every epithet in the
vocabulary of the opposition party was applied to it. It was stigmatized
as a royal edict, an unwarrantable and daring assumption of executive
power, and an open manifestation, of the president and his political
friends, of partiality for England and hostility to France. And it seems
fair to infer, from his letters at that time, that Mr. Jefferson, who
reluctantly voted in the cabinet for the proclamation, governed by his
almost fanatical hatred of Hamilton and his sympathy with the French
regicides, secretly promoted a feeling so hostile to the administration.

The wisdom of the proclamation,[46] and the position of neutrality which
the government of the United States assumed at that time, was soon
apparent, and has been fully vindicated by the logic of subsequent
events.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] Hildreth's History of the United States, Second Series, i, 405.

[42] An eye-witness of the scene when Washington read his annual message
to Congress has left a pleasant account of it on record. "As the
president alighted, and, ascending the steps, paused upon the platform,
looking over his shoulder, in an attitude that would have furnished an
admirable subject for the pencil, he was preceded by two gentlemen
bearing long white wands, who kept back the eager crowd that pressed on
every side to get a nearer view. At that moment I stood so near that I
might have touched his clothes; but I should as soon have thought of
touching an electric battery. I was penet