“On his arrival in England, the revolutionary frenzy in France was at its height. Robespierre was revelling in all the wantonness of unbridled power, and the French people, the unconscious vassals of a bloody tyrant, were perpetrating acts of cruelty and impiety which excited the astonishment and abhorrence of all who duly estimated the claims of humanity and the obligations of religion. With this people the British monarch was waging a war, in which he was supported by the enthusiastic co-operation of his own subjects,[311] and by the alliance of Russia, Austria, Spain, and Sardinia. Although in this war the United States were _professedly neutral_, yet it was well known that the sympathies of a large portion of their citizens were enlisted _on the side of France_, and that they were with difficulty restrained by their government from violating the duties of neutrality. The late proceedings of Congress, also, had tended but little to conciliate the goodwill of England. The American war, and the consequent independence of her colonies, had moreover wounded the pride of Britain, and engendered feelings towards the United States unpropitious to the negotiation. The extent of her resources, the number of her allies, the nature of the war in which she was engaged, and her resentments towards the United States, all combined to indispose Great Britain either to acknowledge the wrongs she had committed or to make reparation for them.” It was in this treaty that Mr. Jay proposed to insert a clause “that if it should unfortunately happen that Great Britain and the United States should be at war, there shall be no privateers commissioned by them against each other.” Unhappily the clause was considered inadmissible by Lord Grenville, and in fact, although the proposition is embraced in Mr. Jay’s original instructions, the American government have receded from the views they then propounded unless other nations exempt private property from capture at sea.[312] [Sidenote: Remarkable omission respecting cotton.]