For another thing, the spirit of devotion to the cause of France had been greatly refreshed and quickened by the agitation over the treaty. From the moment that information concerning the nature of the treaty began to circulate, the cry of “British faction” was taken up by the Democrats and used with telling effect. That the treaty was an infamous instrument arranged for no other purpose than to injure the French cause was generally believed.[263] From beginning to end, Democrats could find nothing in the treaty which had not been directly inspired by hostility to France. Apart from the damage that would ensue to American commerce, the treaty would work for the elevation of monarchical and the undoing of republican principles.[264] Once again George the Third had become the master of the citizens of America, and thus the great accomplishments of the American Revolution had been made to count for nought. British gold had succeeded in effecting the betrayal of the republican cause in this country, and thus had worked itself into a strategic position where it could more easily strangle the life out of the spirit of republicanism in Europe, now so sorely beset in France.[265] One other by-product of the agitation that arose over the treaty has been dwelt upon at length in another connection, but it should be adverted to briefly here. It was inevitable that a discussion so vital, so heated, and so protracted as that of which we have just been taking account, should draw into it those guardians of morals and mentors of public spirit in New England, the Federalist clergy.[266] The disturbance of the public mind over the treaty had been marked by two features full of grave import in the clerical view: vicious attacks upon the officers and measures of the existing government, and a reinvigorated crying-up of French political and religious notions. The offices of government were all, or nearly all, in the hands of Federalists. This being the case, their occupants were doomed to be the chief targets of resentment and villification by men who found such a measure of government as Jay’s Treaty obnoxious in the extreme. But if officers of government were to be pilloried in the stocks of public slander and abuse, how then was the government itself to command the respect and obedience of its citizens? The Federalist clergy of New England saw the pathway of duty shining clear: they must hold up the hands of government at any hazard. Hence it happened that the outcry against “political preaching” grew rapidly in volume from 1795 on.[267]