"The fever has raged, come to its crisis, and is abating." Proof of this, argued Carrington, was the failure of the Republicans to get signatures to "some seditious petitions [against the Jay Treaty] which was sent in vast numbers from Philadelphia" and which "were at first patronized with great zeal by many of our distinguished anarchists; but ... very few copies will be sent to Congress fully signed."[407]
Never was appointive officer so oblivious of facts in his reports to his superior, as was Carrington. Before adjournment on December 12, 1795, the Legislature adopted part of the resolution which had been offered in the morning: "No treaty containing any stipulation upon the subject of powers vested in Congress by the eighth section of the first article [of the Constitution] shall become the Supreme law of the land until it shall have been approved in those particulars by a majority in the House of Representatives; and that the President, before he shall ratify _any_ treaty, shall submit the same to the House of Representatives."[408]
Carrington ignored or failed to understand this amazing resolution of the Legislature of Virginia; for nearly three months later he again sought to solace Washington by encouraging reports. "The public mind in Virginia was never more tranquil than at present. The fever of the late session of our assembly, had not been communicated to the Country.... The people do not approve of the violent and petulant measures of the Assembly, because, in several instances, public meetings have declared a decided disapprobation." In fact, wrote Carrington, Virginia's "hostility to the treaty has been exaggerated." Proof "of the mass of the people being less violent than was asserted" would be discovered "in the failure of our Zealots in getting their signatures to certain printed papers, sent through the Country almost by Horse loads, as copies of a petition to Congress on the subject of the Treaty."[409] But a few short months would show how rose-colored were the spectacles which Mr. Carrington wore when he wrote this reassuring letter.
The ratification of the British treaty; the rage against England; and the devotion to France which already had made the Republican a French party; the resentment of the tri-color Republic toward the American Government--all forged a new and desperate menace. It was, indeed, Scylla or Charybdis, as Washington had foreseen, and bluntly stated, that confronted the National Government. War with France now seemed the rock on which events were driving the hard-pressed Administration--war for France or war from France.