ignorant and violent classes"--who placed it upon a
pole, and, proceeding to the house of the British minister, burned it in
the street in front of it. They performed a like ceremony in front of
the dwelling of the British consul, and also of Mr. Bingham, an
influential federalist, with loud huzzas, yells, and groans.

At the South, equally hostile feelings toward the treaty and its friends
were manifested. John Rutledge, then chief justice of South Carolina,
denounced the treaty in violent language at a public meeting. He said it
was destitute of a single article that could be approved, and reproached
Jay with being either a knave or a fool--with corruption or
stupidity--in having signed it. The stanch old patriot, Christopher
Gadsden, denounced it in terms equally decisive; and Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney, at the close of a violent harangue, moved to request the
president to take steps to have Jay impeached. "If he had not made this
public exposure of his conduct and principles," said Pinckney, "he might
one day have been brought forward, among others, as a candidate for our
highest office: but the general and deserved contempt which his
negotiations have brought both his talents and principles into, would
for ever, he trusted, secure his fellow-citizens from the dangerous and
unwise use which such a man would have made of the powers vested in a
president."

The meeting appointed a committee of fifteen to report their sentiments
at another gathering. It was done on the twenty-second of July. The
report contained severe criticisms upon the several articles of the
treaty, and recommended a memorial to the president, asking him not to
ratify it. Meanwhile the populace trailed a British flag through the
streets, and then burned it at the door of the British consul.

While these meetings were occurring in the principal cities, the
opposition press all over the country was alive with the subject, and
its denunciations were sometimes so violent that it was difficult to
find words strong enough to express them. The Democratic Societies,
vivified by the excitement, were also active with a sort of galvanic
life. One of these in South Carolina resolved, "That we pledge ourselves
to our brethren of the republican societies throughout the Union, as far
as the ability and individual influence of a numerous society can be
made to extend, that we will promote every constitutional mode to bring
John Jay to trial and to justice. He s