By thus acting on the interests of the distillers, the hope was indulged that they might be induced to comply with the law.

Could they have obeyed their wishes, these measures would have produced the desired effect; but they were no longer masters of their own conduct.

Impelled by a furious multitude, they found it much more dangerous to obey the laws than to resist them.

The efficacy of this system too was diminished by a circumstance, which induced the necessity of a second application to the legislature.

The act had not been extended to the territory north-west of the Ohio, in which great part of the army lay; and the distillers eluded the vigilance of the government by introducing their spirits into that territory.
While from causes which were incessant and active in their operation, some of which seem too strongly fixed in the human mind ever to be removed, a broad foundation was thus laid for those party struggles whose fury is generally proportioned to the magnitude of the objects to be attained, and to the means which may be employed in attaining them, the external affairs of the United States sustained no material change.
Of the good understanding which was preserved with France, a fresh proof had been recently given by the employment of Mr.Ternan, a person peculiarly acceptable to the American government, to succeed the Count de Moustiers, as minister plenipotentiary of his Most Christian Majesty; and in turn, Mr.Gouverneur Morris, who was understood to have rendered himself agreeable to the French government, was appointed to represent the United States at the court of Versailles.
In addition to these interchanges of civility, a melancholy occasion had presented itself for giving much more substantial evidence of the alacrity with which the American administration would embrace any proper opportunity of manifesting its disposition to promote the interests of France.
[Sidenote: Insurrection and massacre in the island of St.Domingo.] Early and bitter fruits of that malignant philosophy, which, disregarding the actual state of the world, and estimating at nothing the miseries of a vast portion of the human race, can coolly and deliberately pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems for the attainment of some fancied untried good, were gathered in the French West Indies.