228 The Winning of the West 



the West. A few of the coolest and most intelli- 

 gent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey 

 Marshall, the Federalist Senator from Kentucky, 

 voted for its ratification ; but the general feeling 

 against it was intense. Even Blount, who by this 

 time was pretty well disgusted with the way he had 

 been treated by the Central Government, denounced 

 it, and expressed his belief that Washington would 

 have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring 

 its ratification. 25 



Yet the Westerners were the very people who had 

 no cause whatever to complain of the treaty. It 

 was not an entirely satisfactory treaty; perhaps a 

 man like Hamilton might have procured rather bet- 

 ter terms; but, taken as a whole, it worked an im- 

 mense improvement upon the condition of things 

 already existing. Washington's position was un- 

 doubtedly right. He would have preferred a better 

 treaty, but he regarded the Jay treaty as very much 

 better than none at all. Moreover, the last people 

 who had a right to complain of it were those who 

 were most vociferous in their opposition. The anti- 

 Federalist party was on the whole the party of weak- 

 ness and disorder, the party that was clamorous and 

 unruly, but ineffective in carrying out a sustained 

 policy, whether of offence or of defence, in foreign 

 affairs. The people who afterward became known 

 as Jeffersonian Republicans numbered in their ranks 

 the extremists who had been active as the founders 

 of Democratic societies in the French interest, and 



55 Blount MSS., Blount to Smith, Aug. 24, 1795. 



