The popular clamour against the Government of Great Britain was now at its height. The very name of England was such a by-word, that even immigrants learnt to evade a direct confession that that was their native land,--unless it so happened that the vengeful Pitt, by the advice and verdict of twelve good men and true, had been the cause of expatriation. The marble statue of Chatham had been hanged and afterwards beheaded, and the effigies of King George II. had been solemnly desecrated. The name of George III. was seldom heard in Philadelphia without being graced by some contumelious epithet. But there were not wanting signs, at the close of the year 1796, that the tide was turning in favour of reconciliation with the old country. The insolence of each successive French envoy was becoming too apparent--too ridiculous--for any but the blindest partisans to overlook; and the present representative of the French Convention, Adet, having announced that the Directory were highly incensed at the ratification of the British treaty, many reflecting Americans began to consider that “fraternity” was one of those good things of which they might have, on occasion, too much. The best of it was, that French privateering did quite as much harm as English, whilst the American prize-courts persisted in dealing fairly and impartially with all cases brought to their knowledge, irrespective of nationality. A certain estrangement naturally grew between the two republics, and the high-toned conduct of Adet--more like that of a spoiled child than anything worthy of his dignified office--was highly characteristic of the then rulers of the French nation. The American administration was first startled by reading, in the newspaper, a note from the French Convention which had not yet been submitted to the Secretary of State--a document which, indeed, it was in their discretion to publish at all. The ground of complaint being the new position of English and American merchant-vessels flowing from the new treaty, the answer of the Secretary of State was by no means conciliatory. After a few days’ consideration, therefore, Mons. Adet informed the American Government (and the public by means of an advertisement[1] in the _Aurora_!) that he “suspends himself from his functions” as minister-plenipotentiary of the French Republic. This measure, he subsequently adds, is “not to be considered in the light of a rupture, but as a mark of the sense of injury” felt by the Convention … “which is to last until they can obtain satisfaction.”