he was elected under the new state constitution (1780) to both branches of the state legislature, but accepted only his election to the House of Representatives. On the expiration of his congressional term, he was again chosen a delegate by the Massachusetts legislature, but it was not until 1783 that he resumed his seat. During the second period of his service in Congress, which lasted until 1785, he was a member of the committee to consider the treaty of peace with Great Britain, and chairman of two committees appointed to select a permanent seat of government. In 1784 he bitterly attacked the establishment of the order of the Cincinnati on the ground that it was a dangerous menace to democratic institutions. In 1786 he served in the state House of Representatives. Not favouring the creation of a strong national government he declined to attend the Annapolis Convention in 1786, but in the following year, when the assembling of the Constitutional Convention was an assured fact, although he opposed the purpose for which it was called, he accepted an appointment as one of the Massachusetts delegates, with the idea that he might personally help to check too strong a tendency toward centralization. His exertions in the convention were ceaseless in opposition to what he believed to be the wholly undemocratic character of the instrument, and eventually he refused to sign the completed constitution. Returning to Massachusetts, he spoke and wrote in opposition to its ratification, and although not a member of the convention called to pass upon it, he laid before this convention, by request, his reasons for opposing it, among them being that the constitution contained no bill of rights, that the executive would unduly influence the legislative branch of the government, and that the judiciary would be oppressive. Subsequently he served as an Anti-Federalist in the national House of Representatives in 1789-1793, taking, as always, a prominent part in debates and other legislative concerns. In 1797 he was sent by President John Adams, together with John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, on a mission to France to obtain from the government of the Directory a treaty embodying a settlement of several long-standing disputes. The discourteous and underhanded treatment of this embassy by Talleyrand and his agents, who attempted to obtain their ends by bribery, threats and duplicity, resulted in the speedy retirement of Marshall and Pinckney. The episode is known in American history as the "X Y Z Affair." Gerry, although despairing of any good results, remained in Paris for some time in the vain hope that Talleyrand might offer to a known friend of France terms that had been refused to envoys whose anti-French views were more than suspected. This action of Gerry's brought down upon him from Federalist partisans a storm of abuse and censure, from which he never wholly cleared himself. In 1810-1812 he was governor of Massachusetts.