It is due to the statesmanship of John Jay that the posts still garrisoned by British troops in the United States, contrary to the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris, were finally evacuated in 1796. Jay had been sent by President Washington to go to Great Britain in 1794 as special envoy to settle differences growing out of the failure of that country to keep the obligations of the Treaty of 1784, differences which had aroused a strong war-spirit all over the States. It was easy to foresee, as Jay recognised, that the outcome of the situation would in all probability be unpopular with the people, but he did not hesitate to meet the responsibility that Washington believed he could meet better than any other man, partially because of the reputation he had established in England while negotiating the Treaty of 1784. Jay set sail on May 12, 1794 in the ship _Ohio_, with his son Peter Augustus, and with John Trumbull as secretary. On June 8th he landed at Falmouth and at once entered into relation with Lord Grenville, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who was commissioned by the King to treat with Mr. Jay. The sincerity and candour of the two negotiators soon led to a degree of mutual confidence that both facilitated and lightened their labours. A treaty resulted known on this side of the ocean as "Jay's Treaty," which settled the eastern boundary of Maine, recovered for illegal captures by British cruisers $10,000,000, secured the surrender of the western forts still garrisoned by the British, and contained an article about the West India trade. With the exception of the latter article, the treaty was approved by the President and ratified by the Senate. But many were not satisfied, and denounced Jay with tongue and pen, and even burned him in effigy in Boston, Philadelphia, and at his own home in New York. How different was the homecoming from that after the negotiation of the other treaty, when the freedom of the city was presented to him in a golden box, and each one seemed to vie with every other in extending a welcome! In a letter to a friend, Jay said at that time, "Calumny is seldom durable, it will in time yield to truth," and he bore himself at that time as one having full confidence that he had acted both wisely and skilfully, and expected the people to realise it in time. The British, however, would not evacuate Niagara and the other forts without a semblance of fighting on paper. They held, amongst other reasons, that they were yet justified in maintaining a garrison on American soil because "it was _alleged_ by divers merchants and others, His Majesty's subjects," that they had sustained various losses by the legal impediments they had experienced in collecting debts in America due to them before the war. Mr. Jay, however, with great diplomacy, removed this obstacle by the appointment of Commissioners of Award, and as the British finally were deprived of all pretence for maintaining the