ject, you are at liberty, unofficially,
to mention them, or any of them, according to circumstances), as
evidences of the unpolitic conduct (for so it strikes me) of the
British government towards these United States; that it may be
seen how difficult it has been for the executive, under such an
accumulation of irritating circumstances, to maintain the ground of
neutrality which had been taken; and at a time when the remembrance
of the aid we had received from France in the Revolution was fresh in
every mind, and while the partisans of that country were continually
contrasting the affections of _that_ people with the unfriendly
disposition of the _British government_. And that, too, as I have
observed before, while _their own_ sufferings during the war with the
latter had not been forgotten." The one man in the country who above
all others had the highest conception of American nationality, who
was the first to seek to lift up our politics from the low level of
colonialism, who was the author of the neutrality policy, had reason
to resent the bitter irony of an attack which represented him as a
British sympathizer. The truth is, that the only foreign party at that
time was that which identified itself with France, and which was
the party of Jefferson and the opposition. The Federalists and
the administration under the lead of Washington and Hamilton were
determined that the government should be American and not French, and
this in the eyes of their opponents was equivalent to being in the
control of England. In after years, when the Federalists fell from
power and declined into the position of a factious minority, they
became British sympathizers, and as thoroughly colonial in their
politics as the party of Jefferson had been. If they had had the
wisdom of their better days they would then have made themselves the
champions of the American idea, and would have led the country in the
determined effort to free itself once for all from colonial politics,
even if they were obliged to fight somebody to accomplish it. They
proved unequal to the task, and it fell to a younger generation led by
Henry Clay and his contemporaries to sweep Federalist and Jeffersonian
republican alike, with their French and British politics, out of
existence. In so doing the younger generation did but complete the
work of Washington, for he it was who first trod the path and marked
the way for a true American policy in the midst of men who could not