[Illustration: Portrait.] John Adams From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father, Gilbert Stuart, about 1800--in possession of Henry Adams. Hostility to England, the memory of France's aid to us in our hour of need, the doctrine of "the rights of man," then so much in vogue, the known sympathies of Jefferson and Madison, who were already popular, and, alas, a mean wish to hamper the administration, all helped to swell the ranks of those who swung their hats for France. A far deeper motive with the more thoughtful was the belief that neutrality violated our treaty of 1778 with France, a conclusion at present beyond question. Politically our policy may have been wise, morally it was wrong. The administration, at least its honored head, was doubtless innocent of any intentional injustice; and it could certainly urge a great deal in justification of its course. The form and the aims of the French Government had changed since the treaty originated, involving a state of things which that instrument had not contemplated. France herself defied international law and compact, revolutionizing and incorporating Holland and Geneva, and assaulting our commerce. And war with England then threatened our ruin. Yet the pleading of these considerations in that so trying hour, even had they been wholly pertinent, could not but seem to Frenchmen treason to the cause of liberty. As to many Federalists, trucklers to England, such a charge would have been true. France was not slow to reciprocate in the matter of grievances. In fact, so early as May, 1793, before the proclamation of neutrality could have been heard of in that country, orders had been issued there, wholly repugnant to the treaty (which had ordained that neutral ships could carry what goods they pleased--free ships, free goods), to capture and condemn English merchandise on American vessels. Provisions owned by Americans and en route to England were also to be forfeited as contraband. Even the most reasonable French officials seemed bent on treating our country as a dependency of France.