The more sagacious opponents of the administration believed true policy as well as true honesty to demand rigid and pronounced adherence to the letter of the French treaty. They were convinced from the outset that France would vanquish her enemies, and that close alliance with her was the sure and the only sure way to coerce either Great Britain to justice or Spain to a reasonable attitude touching the navigation of the Mississippi; while by offending France, they argued, we should be forced to wrestle single-handed with England first, then with victorious France, meantime securing no concession whatever from Spain. This was a shrewd forecast of the actual event. The Federalists, destitute of idealism, proved to have been overawed by the prestige of England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart to the French people. After Napoleon's great campaign of 1796-97, Pitt seeks peace, which the French Directory feels able to decline. In 1802 the Peace of Amiens is actually concluded, upon terms dictated by France. Had we been still in France's friendship, the two republics might have compelled England's abandonment of that course which evoked the war of 1812. As it was, ignored by England, to whom, as detailed below, we cringed in consenting to Jay's treaty, we were left to encounter the French navy alone, escaping open and serious war with France only by a readiness to negotiate which all but compromised our dignity. The Mississippi we had at last to open with money. The federalist leaning toward Great Britain probably did not, to so great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, which fact, with many others, lent to this attitude the appearance of deficient patriotism, of sycophancy toward our old foe and persecutor.