The circumstances attending the points of difference with Great
Britain, were still more serious; because, in their progress, a temper
unfavourable to accommodation had been uniformly displayed.

The resentments produced by the various calamities war had occasioned,
were not terminated with their cause. The idea that Great Britain was
the natural enemy of America had become habitual. Believing it
impossible for that nation to have relinquished its views of conquest,
many found it difficult to bury their animosities, and to act upon the
sentiment contained in the declaration of independence, "to hold them
as the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends." In addition
to the complaints respecting the violation of the treaty of peace,
events were continually supplying this temper with fresh aliment. The
disinclination which the cabinet of London had discovered to a
commercial treaty with the United States was not attributed
exclusively to the cause which had been assigned for it. It was in
part ascribed to that jealousy with which Britain was supposed to view
the growing trade of America.

The general restrictions on commerce by which every maritime power
sought to promote its own navigation, and that part of the European
system in particular, by which each aimed at a monopoly of the trade
of its colonies, were felt with peculiar keenness when enforced by
England. The people of America were perhaps the more sensible to the
British resolutions on this subject, because, having composed a part
of that empire, they had grown up in the habit of a free intercourse
with all its ports; and, without accurately appreciating the cause to
which a change of this usage was to be ascribed, they attributed it to
a jealousy of their prosperity, and to an inclination to diminish the
value of their independence. In this suspicious temper, almost every
unfavourable event which occurred was traced up to British hostility.

That an attempt to form a commercial treaty with Portugal had failed,
was attributed to the influence of the cabinet of London; and to the
machinations of the same power were also ascribed the danger from the
corsairs of Barbary, and the bloody incursions of the Indians. The
resentment excited by these causes was felt by a large proportion of
the American people; and the expression of it was common and public.
That correspondent dispositions existed in England is by no means
improbable, and the necessary effect