burned before the house of the
British Minister; riot and mob violence held carnival everywhere.
Party spirit never before, and never since, perhaps, ran so high. One
effigy represented Jay as saying, while supporting a pair of scales,
with the treaty on one side and a bag of gold on the other, "Come up
to my price, and I will sell you my country." Chalked in large white
letters on one of the principal streets in New York, appeared these
words: "Damn John Jay! Damn every one that won't damn John Jay!! Damn
every one that won't put lights in his windows and sit up all night
damning John Jay!!!"[72] This revulsion of public sentiment was not
exactly a tempest in a teapot, but it proved a storm of limited
duration, the elections in the spring of 1796 showing decided
legislative gains for the Federalists.

[Footnote 72: John Jay, _Second Letter on Dawson's Federalist_, N.Y.,
1864, p. 19.]

Hamilton divined the cause of the trouble. "There are three persons,"
he wrote,[73] "prominent in the public eye as the successor of the
President--Mr. Adams, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Jefferson.... Mr. Jay has been
repeatedly the object of attacks with the same view. His friends, as
well as his enemies, anticipated that he could make no treaty which
would not furnish weapons against him; and it were to have been
ignorant of the indefatigable malice of his adversaries to have
doubted that they would be seized with eagerness and wielded with
dexterity. The peculiar circumstances which have attended the two last
elections for governor of this State have been of a nature to give the
utmost keenness to party animosity. It was impossible that Mr. Jay
should be forgiven for his double, and, in the last instance,
triumphant success; or that any promising opportunity of detaching
from him the public confidence, should pass unimproved.... Trivial
facts frequently throw light upon important designs. It is remarkable
that in the toasts given on July 4, 1795, whenever there appears a
direct or indirect censure of the treaty, it is pretty uniformly
coupled with compliments to Mr. Jefferson, and to our late governor,
Mr. Clinton, with an evident design to place those gentlemen in
contrast to Mr. Jay, and, decrying him, to elevate them. No one can be
blind to the finger of party spirit, visible in these and similar
transactions. It indicates to us clearly one powerful source of
opposition to the treaty."

[Footnote 73: Hamilton's _Camillus_, July 23, 1795, _