n, which a sense of respect for themselves, and
for the dignity of the nation they represent, forbade them to brook."

There was nothing in this statement to rebuke. Young Erskine had been
displaced by an English minister who had acquired the reputation of
being an edged-tool against neutral nations, a curiously narrow,
hide-bound politician, whose language was as insolent as his manners
were offensive. The Governor's reference, therefore, had not been too
severe, nor had his statement overleaped the truth; yet Jonas Platt
attacked it with great asperity, arraigning the national
administration and charging that the country had more cause for war
with France than with Great Britain. This was both unwise and
untenable. The Governor had aimed his criticism at France as well as
at England. He spoke of one as controlling the destinies of the
European continent, of the other as domineering upon the ocean, and of
both as overleaping "the settled principles of public law, which
constituted the barriers between the caprice, the avarice, or the
tyranny of a belligerent, and the rights and independence of a
neutral." But Jonas Platt, betrayed by his prejudices against
Jefferson and France, went on with an argument well calculated to give
his opponents an advantage. His language was strong and clear, his
sarcasm pointed; but it gave DeWitt Clinton the opportunity of
charging Federalists with taking sides with the British against their
own country.

There never was a time when the Federalists, as a national party, were
willing to join hands with England to the disadvantage of their
country. They had the same reasons for disliking England that animated
their opponents. But their antipathy to Jacobins and to Jefferson, and
the latter's partiality for France, drove them into sympathy with
Great Britain's struggle against Napoleon, until the people suspected
them of too great fondness for English institutions and English
principles. Several events, too, seemed to justify such a suspicion,
notably the adherence of British Tories to the Federalist party, and
the latter's zeal to allay hostile feelings growing out of the
Revolutionary war. To such an extent had this sentimental sympathy
been carried, that, in the summer of 1805, the Federalists of Albany,
having a majority in the common council, foolishly refused to allow
the Declaration of Independence to be read as a part of the exercises
in celebration of the Fourth of July. Naturally