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, _Works_, Vol. 4, p. 371.]