ur. The
Virginia house of delegates approved of the action of their senators in
voting against the treaty, and rejected a resolution declaring
undiminished confidence in the president. The Maryland legislature
denounced the assaults on the president, and declared their "unabated
reliance on his integrity, judgment, and patriotism." The Pennsylvania
senate took similar action; and the legislature of New Hampshire
denounced the seditious declaimers against the treaty and the
administration. North Carolina would not stand by Virginia in her
action; but the South Carolina legislature declared the treaty "highly
injurious to the general interests of the United States." The matter was
not acted upon by the senate, however, and the subject was not again
taken up. The legislature of Delaware approved of the treaty; while
Governor Samuel Adams, in his address to the general court of
Massachusetts, spoke of the treaty as "pregnant with evil." The
Massachusetts senate considered any action on the subject as an
interference with the powers delegated to the general government; while
the house, by a decided vote, suggested that "respectful submission on
the part of the people to the constituted authorities," was "the surest
means of enjoying and perpetuating the invaluable blessings of our free
and representative government." Rhode Island approved of the action of
the senate and the chief magistrate; and in New York, as well as in
Rhode Island and Massachusetts, a proposition made by resolutions in the
Virginia legislature, that the constitution of the United States should
be so amended as to admit the house of representatives to a share in the
treaty-making power, and otherwise abridging the powers of the
government, was rejected or laid on the table.

The tardiness of the British government in the performance of its acts
of justice toward the United States, and the present apparent hesitation
in ratifying the treaty, perplexed Washington; for this seeming
unfriendliness was used as a weapon by the opposition. Accordingly,
toward the close of the year, he attempted to remind that government of
its duty, in an unofficial way, through Gouverneur Morris, who, having
been succeeded by Mr. Monroe as minister to the French republic, was now
in England, and on quite intimate terms with Lord Grenville and other
ministers, and members of the privy council. In a letter to Morris, on
the twenty-second of December, after giving at much length a