Popular sympathy is at best but an unstable sentiment, and so it proved with this unreasoning affection of the American people for France. Firmly the American authorities held to their policy of neutrality, refusing to be influenced in the slightest degree by the popular clamor of the people for an alliance with France. Then the French sympathizers made their fatal error. In the presidential chair of the United States sat Washington, the hero of the Revolution. Rashly the French minister and his following began an onslaught upon this great and wise man, because of his firm determination to keep the United States neutral. They accused him of being an "aristocrat;" of wishing to found an hereditary monarchy, with himself at the head. No epithet was too vile for them to apply to him: "liar" and "traitor" were terms freely applied to him whom we regard as the veritable founder of our free Republic. Such intemperate and unreasoning malice as this had a very different effect from what was intended by the French sympathizers, or Republicans as the party was then termed. The party supporting the President gained strength and influence, even while the actions of Napoleon and the French Chamber of Deputies were giving American seamen the same grounds of complaint as those which Great Britain had so long forced upon them. It was during the last year of the administration of Washington, that the French Directory issued secret orders to the commanders of all French men-of-war, directing them to treat neutral vessels in the same manner as they had suffered the English to treat them. The cunning intent of this order is apparent by its wording: "Treat American vessels as they suffer themselves to be treated by the British." What course does that leave open to the Americans, save to resist the British, thereby become involved in a war, and so aid France? But there was one other alternative; and, much to the surprise and chagrin of the French, the Americans adopted it. And the only effect of the diplomatic secret order was to embroil France in a naval war with the United States.