The general restrictions on commerce by which every maritime power sought to promote its own navigation, and that part of the European system in particular, by which each aimed at a monopoly of the trade of its colonies, were felt with peculiar keenness when enforced by England. The people of America were perhaps the more sensible to the British resolutions on this subject, because, having composed a part of that empire, they had grown up in the habit of a free intercourse with all its ports; and, without accurately appreciating the cause to which a change of this usage was to be ascribed, they attributed it to a jealousy of their prosperity, and to an inclination to diminish the value of their independence. In this suspicious temper, almost every unfavourable event which occurred was traced up to British hostility. That an attempt to form a commercial treaty with Portugal had failed, was attributed to the influence of the cabinet of London; and to the machinations of the same power were also ascribed the danger from the corsairs of Barbary, and the bloody incursions of the Indians. The resentment excited by these causes was felt by a large proportion of the American people; and the expression of it was common and public. That correspondent dispositions existed in England is by no means improbable, and the necessary effect of this temper was to increase the difficulty of adjusting the differences between the two nations. With France, the most perfect harmony subsisted. Those attachments which originated in the signal services received from his most Christian Majesty during the war of the revolution, had sustained no diminution. Yet, from causes which it was found difficult to counteract, the commercial intercourse between the two nations was not so extensive as had been expected. It was the interest, and of consequence the policy of France, to avail herself of the misunderstandings between the United States and Great Britain, in order to obtain such regulations as might gradually divert the increasing trade of the American continent from those channels in which it had been accustomed to flow; and a disposition was felt throughout the United States to co-operate with her, in enabling her merchants, by legislative encouragements, to rival those of Britain in the American market. A great revolution had commenced in that country, the first stage of which was completed by limiting the powers of the monarch, and by the establishment of a popular assembly. In no part of the globe was this revolution hailed with more joy than in America. The influence it would have on the affairs of the world was not then distinctly foreseen: and the philanthropist, without becoming a political partisan, rejoiced in the event. On this subject, therefore, but one sentiment existed.